The Kwara State Focal Person for the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), Hajia Bashirah Abdulrazaq-Sanusi, has said beneficiaries of ‘Trader Moni,’ one of the programmes of the federal government’ designed to reduce poverty in Nigeria, are reluctant to repay the loan.
Speaking on Wednesday, Abdulrazaq-Sanusi, said about 10,000 people benefitted from over N1.3bn disbursed by the federal government for the “Trader Moni” programme in the state, but noted that, beneficiaries were not willing to repay the loans.
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.”
She said beneprogramm who repay their loans, are entitled to another loan of N50,000 , which is the next stage of the Trader Moni programme.
More so, Abdulrazaq-Sanusi said that over 15,000 beneficiaries of another programme by the federal government, tagged, ‘N-Power’, were showing lukewarm attitude to the state government’s K-Power programme, created with view of reabsorbing them into the MDAs.
She said, the Kwara state government replicated the youth empowerment programme in the state, tagged K-Power, in bid to mitigate the effect and alse absorb affected youths, following the termination of the N-Power Programme by the Federal government in July this year.
Recall that, in a bid to boost small scale businesses in the markets, the Trader Moni was flagged off by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo in 2019 to support women with N10,000 as soft loans which are meant to be returned after some time.
