The focal person for the Kwara State Chapter of National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), Hajia Bashirah Abdulrazaq-Sanusi has said that the beneficiaries of Trader Moni, a programme of the Federal government’s National Social Investment Programme created to curb poverty in Nigeria are unwilling to repay the loan.
Abdulrazaq-Sanusi said that approximately 10,000 people benefitted from Trader Moni programme in Kwara State with more than N1.3bn disbursed to them.
However, she lamented that the people were unwilling to repay the loan.
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 made it known that the programme was established to offer soft loans to grow small scale businesses in the markets and was launched by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo in 2019 to help women with N10,000 as soft loans which were meant to be paid back, after which they would be availed the sum of N50,000.
In the same vein, Abdulrazaq-Sanusi expressed sadness about the fact that more than 15,000 beneficiaries of N-Power Programme were exhibiting nonchalant attitude to the state government programme of absorbing them again into the MDAs.
She said after the N-Power Programme was terminated by the Federal government in July, 2020, Kwara State government came up with a similar youth empowerment programme in the state which is called K-Power, so as not to throw beneficiaries into the labour market after they exit N-Power.
