From Magnus Eze, Abuja
Bank of Agriculture (BOA) and Nigeria Postal Service (NIPOST) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to deploy post offices in the rural areas to branches of the bank.
Managing Director of BOA, Alhaji Mohammed Adamu at the signing ceremony in Abuja, Friday, said it was imperative to deploy the over 1600 outlets of NIPOST in the country, especially in the rural communities to engender financial inclusion of and input delivery to farmers.
He explained that it would also be avenue for output aggregation as farmers could dispose their produce through the process.
Adamu revealed that warehousing receipts would be introduced to address the challenge of storage faced by most rural farmers.
In his remarks, Post Master General of the Federation, Bisi Adegbuyi described the event as historic, having found another willing partner in improving the lives of the rural poor.
He noted that NIPOST was already partnering the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on financial inclusion, so the BOA coming on board would further extend the frontiers.
A technical implementation committee and steering team would be inaugurated to see to the successful execution of the MoU.