Recapitalisation: Bank of Agriculture pledges restructuring

The new Managing Director of the Bank of Agriculture, Ayo Sotinrin, has promised to restructure the organisation to meet its mandate.

Sotinrin said this on Wednesday while taking over from his predecessor, Alwan Ali Hassan, at the bank’s headquarters in Kaduna.

The PUNCH reports that President Bola Tinubu had last week appointed Sotinrin as the new Managing Director of the Bank of Agriculture.

The appointment was confirmed in a statement issued last Friday by the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga.

Sotinrin, a seasoned finance and agribusiness expert, brings a wealth of experience from both the private and public sectors.

Speaking during the handing-over ceremony, he noted that the BOA under his leadership will digitise all its branches across the country, do smart banking and deploy capital in a very intelligent, smart and efficient way.

He said his vision for the bank includes leveraging technology and developing value chains in key crops like cocoa and ginger to become the largest bank in Africa.

“We want to move away from those days of non-performing loans and have proper control in place in our new M and E systems and where we have extension services, or we have collateral management to go to the farms to ensure people are doing what they said they are doing with the finances we give them,” he said.

He added that he aimed to create a new food system, focusing on seed development, mechanisation for small and large-scale farmers, and homegrown fertiliser production.

“We need to create a new food system, starting with the seed system.

We need to start working on how we mechanise both for small-scale farmers and large-scale farmers. We also need to look at the area of inputs within the agriculture sector, creating homegrown fertiliser and also expanding our land use for farms,” Sotinrin said.

According to him, the bank will expand financial services to rural areas, targeting youthful farming populations and promoting agricultural development.

Sotinrin urged large-scale farmers to partner with BOA, citing plans for recapitalisation and enhanced support.

He expressed optimism about working with President Bola Tinubu and the Minister of Agriculture to drive agricultural growth and foreign exchange earnings.

He said, “Financial inclusion is one thing we talked about a lot. We are bringing everyone into the finance net. We will go to the hinterlands where we have a lot of youthful populations of farmers and bring them into banking with us. We are also encouraging large-scale farmers to look towards the Bank of Agriculture because we are going to recapitalise.

“With the help of the president, the minister of agriculture on food security will join hands and make bold steps in agriculture. How do we produce, how do we process and how do we get foreign exchange? We need to think of how to develop a value chain for ginger, cocoa and so many other things we plan to work on as a bank. “

The outgoing MD said N8bn in recoveries were made since 2020, with N5bn remitted to the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Additionally, he said the bank has deployed solar energy in 110 branches, reducing running costs and promoting sustainability.