MD of NIRSAL Abdulhameed named Best Global CEO

Commercial banks have pledged to provide an additional $500m to fund agriculture in the short to medium-term,

The Managing Director/CEO of the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) Plc, Aliyu Abdulhameed, has been named among the Best Global CEOs by the CEO Today Magazine global award.

In a statement, NIRSAL said the 2021 edition of the award won by Abdulhameed was in recognition of his outstanding contributions to agriculture and agribusiness.

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CEO Today Magazine identifies and honours the most respected companies and their C-Level executives who lead the way for others on a global stage.

Some of the NIRSAL achievements that enhanced CEO Today’s reckoning of the institution and its CEO, Abdulhameed, is the facilitation of over $550 million to various actors across agricultural value chains for mechanisation activities, input distribution, and the production, processing, trading and marketing of agricultural commodities.

Commercial banks have pledged to provide an additional $500m to fund agriculture in the short to medium-term, NIRSAL Credit Risk Guarantee (CRG) and its structured agro-based geo-cooperatives are sustained.

Last year, there was remarkable growth in the rate of bank lending to agriculture rising from 1.4 per cent pre-NIRSAL to 4.8 per cent as of Q3 2020.

Abdulhameed said it came as a surprise so it would serve as a motivation in his quest to bring about more positive change in agriculture in Nigeria through his position as MD/CEO of NIRSAL Plc.

He also noted NIRSAL’s strict adherence to global best practices has proven to be effective given CEO Today’s recognition and award.

Some of the other awardees include Michael Lampel of QOOPER Media & Michael Lampel Consulting, Germany; Ruain Kelleher of Immedis in Ireland; Kan Shi of Cue Group in China, and Sara Spencer of SolonTek in the USA.