Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending Microfinance Bank (NMFB) has denied allegations that its staff had extorted applicants seeking micro loans and promised to grant all qualified applicants their loan requests.
The bank’s management, in a statement on Thursday, described the accusation as not only spurious but unfounded, stressing that the bank “frowns at any form of unethical practices or unprofessional conduct which contravenes our policy and core values”.
The management clarified: “NMFB has repeatedly warned applicants, through various social media platforms, that the AGSMEIS loan application process is individual-based, after the completion of a N10,000-cost training exercise by NMFB-accredited Entrepreneurial Development Institutions, EDIs.
“The business plan, which is also automatically generated on the portal, has two options – a free application and another that cost N5,000. Applicants have the liberty to use any of the two business plan options. No EDI has the right to charge extra cost”, it added.
The management urged applicants to report any observed anomalies or form of solicitation directly or through its whistleblower channels.
It further stated that applicants who were recently sent a decline application message due to their inability to meet our set current risk assessment criteria that they could re-apply with a business plan tailored to the new maximum of N3 million threshold at no cost to them.
The bank further stated: “Once again, we remind all Nigerians that the AGSMEIS loan is not a grant but a loan.”
Recently, some aggrieved individuals, who applied for loans under the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s Agribusiness Small & Medium Enterprises Scheme (AGSMEIS), had alleged that the bank conspired with Entrepreneurial Development Institutions (EDIs) to extort money from applicants with the promise to grant them approvals for their loan requests.
