The Focal Person for the National Social Investment Programme in Kwara State, Hajia Bashirah Abdulrazaq-Sanusi, has said that beneficiaries of ‘Trader Moni,’ one of the programmes of the Federal government’s designed to reduce poverty in Nigeria are reluctant to repay the loan.
Lamenting on Wednesday that the people were not willing to repay the loan, Abdulrazaq-Sanusi said that about 10,000 people benefited from “Trader Moni” programme in the state with over N1.3bn disbursed to them.
She said:
Poor masses are not ready to repay the loan after collection because of the attitude of Nigerians to anything from the government, thinking it is national cake. Also, those that disbursed the money do not have records of beneficiaries like phone numbers and addresses, thus, making it difficult to track them for repayment.
The programme was designed to provide soft loans to boost small scale businesses in the markets and was flagged off by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo in 2019 to support women with N10,000 as soft loans to be paid back, after which they would enjoy the next stage of N50,000, Abdulrazaq-Sanusi explained.
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In the same vein, she lamented that over 15,000 beneficiaries of N-Power Programme were showing lukewarm attitude to the state government programme of reabsorbing them into the MDAs.
She said following the termination of N-Power Programme by the Federal government in July this year, Kwara State government replicated the youth empowerment programme in the state, codenamed K-Power, in order not to throw beneficiaries into the labour market after exiting N-Power.