Chris Ugwu 
Heritage Bank Plc, in partnership with the Central Bank of Nigeria, has set up plans to disburse N41 billion to farmers in 14 states for the expansion of wheat production. The bank will register the wheat farmers with the Lagos Commodities and Futures Exchange (LCFE) disbursement with expectation to cover about 111,025 hectares of land to attain huge milestones in wheat production.
Heritage Bank has also taken adequate steps to create an enabling environment for sustainable growth in wheat production, thereby partnering with LCFE for all valuechain stakeholders to interact and trade ownership titles to specific quantities of wheat by registering members for their clients on the commodity exchange platform.
Speaking at the media briefing engagement with pressmen, the MD/ CEO of Heritage Bank, Ifie Sekibo, stated that the partnership is basically to consummate Wheat Seed Multiplication Project under CBN’s Brown Revolution Initiative, in order to ensure due diligence on loan administration, monitoring and recovery, which would bring about increase in the domestic production of wheat and close the wide supply gap in the Nigerian agricultural space. Sekibo, represented by the Divisional Head, Agribusiness, Natural Resources & Project Development, Heritage Bank, Olugbenga Awe, said that as a bank, it partnered with CBN to ensure wheat planting on wet and dry seasons. “What we want to achieve is to end importation of seeds and make Nigeria self-sufficient in wheat production.