SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF‘BANK OF AGRICULTURE’AND SUSTAINABLEDEVELOPMENT IN BORNO STATE OF NIGERIA
Uba, Isaac Andiyawa,& Ibrahim AhmedJajereDepartment of Geography
Federal University Gashua, Yobe State, Nigeria,
E-mail: isaacandiyawa@gmail.com, iajajere2000@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
Bank of
Agriculture (BOA), established in the year 2000, stands the largest rural
development finance institutions in Nigeria. Empowering the less privileged
groups is the priority objective of the micro credit scheme of the BOA.This
paper therefore, examines the spatial distribution of the BOAandthe adverse
effects on sustainable rural development in Borno State.Borno State has twenty
seven Local Government Areas (LGAs)but because of security threat in the state,
the study was delimited to only ten out of sixteenLGAsfound served by the BOA.Informationon
BOA branch locations and data on borrowers’status were primarily obtained
through interview with the BOA officials and questionnaire administration on
the micro credit beneficiaries respectively. Data on the LGAs served and
spatial outreachof the micro credit were secondarily extracted from official
documents of the BOA.164 respondents were purposively sampled out ofthe total 1099
borrowers in the study area. Analytical tables and a descriptive map were used
to expound the data. The findings revealed that BOA branches location and
spatial outreachacross the three Borno Senatorial Zones is biased towards Borno
South and Central and neglectedthe North. Italso revealed that social
impediments constituted the major problem of the less privileged groups, andthe
implication ofneglecting such huge socially impeded groups is its related torestive
and strife prone zones in the state. The significance is that neglecting the
socially impeded groups is related to security threat in the state. Recommendations
are made for extension of more BOA branches toBorno North Senatorial Zone andother
studies toexamine the spatial distributionof other rural development programmes
in the state toenable generalization about negligence in spatial distribution
of rural development inputs and societal restiveness and strife.
Keywords:BOA, SpatialDistribution, Biased, Negligence, Less-privileged, Strife.