By Mumini Abdulkareem
The Kwara State Focal Person for the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) Mrs Bashirah AbdulRazaq Sanusi has denied saying that the scheme has no records of beneficiaries of the popular Trader Moni.
In a statement issued in Ilorin on Friday, the Focal Person described the report as false and urged members of the public to disregard it.
“The report was embarrassingly false and laced with suspicious intents. The NSIP is one of the most organised and well-documented social investment programmes that any government has ever put in place in the history of Nigeria. Not only were the details of beneficiaries properly captured in verifiable and IT-driven database, the NSIP possesses online and offline relevant information about the age, address, and other things pertaining to their identities for the sake of record.
“Second, while the Focal Person indeed spoke about the reluctance of some beneficiaries to promptly pay back, she made it clear that her office was in fact in constant touch with such beneficiaries to know how they are doing as part of the built-in mechanisms for the success of the programme. To be clear, the Office maintains an active call centre through which beneficiaries are contacted from time to time. How can you be in constant touch with somebody whose data you do not possess? That would be contradictory”, the statement added.
Meanwhile, the federal government backed National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) has disbursed the sum of N13.3 billion to 15, 246 beneficiaries of the national youth empowerment programme (N-Power)in Kwara state.
Kwara state focal person for the programme, Hajia Bashirah AbdulRazaq disclosed this during an interactive session with newsmen in Ilorin, the state capital last week explaining that batch A beneficiaries of the N-Power scheme were engaged for a period of 42 months and paid a total sum of N7.4 billion.
She added that batch B beneficiaries spent 24 months and were paid a total sum of N5.7 billion.
“Non graduates received the sum of N10,000 every month and were engaged for a period of 24 months with a total sum of over N24 million spent”, she added.
Hajia AbdulRasaq expressed delight that the Kwara state government has replicated the youth empowerment programme codenamed K-Power, in order not to throw beneficiaries in to the labour market after exiting N-Power.
The focal person, who said that about 10,000 people benefitted from “trader moni” programme in the state with over N1.3 billion disbursed to them, lamented that the people were not willing to repay the loan.
“Poor masses are not ready to repay the loan after collection because of the attitude of Nigerian to anything from the government thinking it is national cake.
“The programme is designed to provide soft loans to boost small scale businesses in the markets which Vice President Yemi Osinbajo flagged off sometime last year to support women with N10,000 as soft loans to be paid back and then enjoy the next stage of N50,000.
“Unfortunately, many beneficiaries didn’t pay back or the channel for payment was not identified, therefore, beneficiaries could not fulfil their pledges. Though, the component is going through restructuring to seeing it achieves its objectives”, she said.
