The Federal Government has formally inaugurated a new Board of Directors for the Bank of Agriculture (BOA), charging them with rebuilding the institution into the state’s primary vehicle for expanding credit access and securing food sovereignty.
Speaking during the inauguration ceremony in Abuja on Friday, 3 July 2026, the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, stated that the board will oversee a historic, presidentially approved recapitalisation process to transform the 54-year-old bank into a robust, tech-driven asset under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda.
The sweeping institutional reforms come at a critical time as the bank transitions out of decades of fragmented, low-impact financial interventions.
Originally established in Kaduna in 1972 as the Nigerian Agricultural Bank, the repositioned development institution is currently undergoing a structural restructuring supervised by the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), with the Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MoFI) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) serving as its core institutional shareholders.
Senator Kyari charged the incoming board members to immediately scale up the comprehensive digital transformation systems already put in place by the bank’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Ayodeji Oludare Sotinrin, which streamline automated loan appraisal, electronic disbursement, and credit recovery paths for rural smallholders.
The mandate explicitly ties the bank’s financial portfolio to Africa’s largest agricultural mechanisation initiative.
The Board is directed to integrate BOA’s credit facilities directly with the Renewed Hope National Agricultural Mechanisation Programme, which is built to serve over one million farmers annually, alongside the pan-African Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZ) and the World Bank-backed AGROW initiative.
The Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Dr Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, along with the Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Dr Marcus Olaniyi Ogunbiyi, emphasised that the board’s operational success will be judged by its strict ability to move funding to genuine value chain operators rather than simple corporate balance-sheet metrics.
The freshly activated leadership team will govern under a strict statutory charter that mandates yearly attestations to a Directors’ Code of Conduct to eliminate internal conflicts of interest.
Accepting the national assignment, the newly appointed Chairman of the Board, Alhaji Muhammad Babangida, CON, pledged that the executive body will deliver transparent, accountable oversight to restore the institution’s regional relevance.
The fully inaugurated board structure consists of Alhaji Muhammad Babangida as Chairman, Ayodeji Oludare Sotinrin as MD/CEO, three specialised Executive Directors, Hajiya Fatima Garba (Corporate Services), Hakeem Oluwatosin Salami (Operations and IT), and Hajiya Ka’amuna Ibrahim Khadi (Risk Management), supported by five Non-Executive Directors drawn from the economic and public sectors.
Source: Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation
