INSTITUTIONAL MICROCREDIT SUPPLY AND POVERTY ALLEVIATION: CONTEXTUAL VIEW ON ARABLE CROP FARMERS IN NIGERIA

The study investigated institutional microcredit supply and poverty alleviation in the context of arable crop farmers in Nigeria. Evidence from empirical studies shows that various efforts in Nigeria towards improving credit delivery to the agricultural sector over the years to alleviate poverty appear not to have been successful as incidence of poverty among farmers is still on the increase. Also, most of the works on credit delivery to the sector have focused mainly on the informal and public sector initiatives with little attention on the private sector, institutional microcredit providers. This study tried to fill these gaps and used both primary and secondary data. Tools used in analyses were trend equations and the FGT poverty measurement indices. The results showed that non beneficiaries of institutional microcredit were poorer than the beneficiaries of the credit. The results also showed that while institutional microcredit helped in improving the farmers' wellbeing by reducing their poverty gap and severity it failed to promote them out of poverty as incidence of poverty remained significantly unchanged. Based on these results, it was recommended that government should support institutional microcredit providers to ensure flow of credit to farmers on a more sustainable basis.