Several people who bought into the attractive presentation of Sterling Bank Plc and Eatrich Farms and Food Limited, on the Agricultural Credit Guarantee Scheme Fund (ACGSF) are counting their losses.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has it on its website that the ACGSF “was established by the Federal Military Government under the Agricultural Credit Guarantee Scheme Fund Decree 1977 (Decree No. 20) and as amended on 13th June 1988, and 26th June 2019.”
The apex bank further avers that “The Fund is under the management of the Agricultural Credit Guarantee Scheme Fund Board and the Central Bank of Nigeria is the Managing Agent for the administration of the Scheme.
“The work relating to the Scheme is handled by the Development Finance Department of the Bank headed by the Director.”
Unsuspecting members of the people would have been swayed by such copious institutional and legal backing for the ACGSF, which it now appears that Sterling Bank and Eatrich Farms rode on to develop a bait to hook some.
Biztellers gathered that as much as N20 billion would have been involved with up to 20 members of the public, in one WhatsApp Group, having fallen prey to the theatricals of the duo of Sterling Bank and Eatrich Farms, who spiced their presentations with Nollywood actors and social media influencers.
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In addition, the CBN explained that “The purpose of the Fund is to provide guarantee in respect of loans granted by lending banks for agricultural purposes under the scheme with the aim of increasing the level of bank credit to the agricultural sector.”
The drive to increase food production, prevailing unemployment and under-employment as well as harsh economic environment would have added to weaponising the ACGSF in the hands of some corporate actors.
Many of those who signed-up with Sterling Bank and Eatrich Farms, mostly young Nigerians, are now aggrieved that facility packaged for fish farming has turned out to resemble loan racketeering.
One of the victims, an entrepreneur, Sogbesan Oluwayemisi told Biztellers that the bank and farm packaged and marketed the loan as an high yielding agro-entrepreneurship deal with zero risk since it was guaranteed by the CBN.
The promoters, she added, made it clear that any portion of the loan the CBN’s guarantee did not cover had been taken care of by the secured collaterals provided by the Eatrich Farms, already verified and well documented by Sterling Bank.
The whole scheme was also 100 percent insured for which insurance premium was debited against each applicant at disbursement.
These, among other factors, she explained, made the offer easy for people like her to accept.
According to her, they were told that the bank and the farm had to take professional control, for which each applicant signed-off for a new account with the bank, over which the account holder had no control.
The average loan disbursement to the participant stood at N2.5m.
The loan was packaged to be a short-term one, running for 120 days. It was supposed to be used for cart fish farming, an area Eatrich Farms went to great lengths to showcase competence to convince the prospects that nothing would go wrong.
However, those who accepted this offer were first jolted with the discover that Eatrich Farms folded up abruptly, after using the scheme to rake-in huge sums of money suspected to be well over N20bn.
Oluwayemisi further averred that when they contacted Sterling Bank, they were told not to panic because the bank had the loan fully secured and covered with collaterals provided by Eatrich Farms in addition to the fully paid insurance policy.
But much to their embarrassment the bank had gone ahead to debit their individual accounts for the loans.
She laments thus, “when the bank first debited my individual account with the sum of almost N80,000.00 in February 2022, I quickly reached out to Sterling Bank and it was promptly reversed.
“However, another head of the hydra, this time a more sinister one, has reared up in April 2023 with a debit of a similar amount, which efforts to get the bank to reverse are proving abortive.
“When I first noticed the second debit, I reached out to my account officer, Mrs Bunmi at Sterling Bank, but she was not as cooperative as she was over the first debit.”
Still on reactions from Sterling Bank, Oluwayemisi stated, “My accounts officer counselled me to make a physical appearance to lay my complaint at the bank, which I did. The customer service officer, I met, asked for the number of my account officer and I rang her up for them to speak. Their conversation didn’t go well, from what I overheard.
“Thereafter, they referred me to the supervisor, Michael Ifaluyi, who informed me that he was on vacation but would look into the matter. My gut-feeling is that once he looked-in and discovered that there was a racket, he opted to steer-clear because he has been making excuses since that day.”
Efforts to get Eatrich Farms’ side of the story proved abortive as calls to Tobi Dada did not connect, as her telephone line could not be reached as at the time of filing this report.
However, Ifaluyi said that he just assumed responsibility at the branch where the transaction took place and would need time to study it properly before offering a proper update.
He, expressed empathy with those who took the loan, whom he described as ‘young Nigerians.’ He assured that he would resume in a matter of weeks and would try to resolve the matter.
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