Folalumi Alaran
A non-profit humanitarian organization, The Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim Foundation has set aside 10 million naira as grants to 200 smalescale entrepreneurs in Abuja as part of its Economic Empowerment Programme for vulnerable people in the society.
The Foundation, promoted by a former Presidential Candidate and Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, Mr Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim gave fifty thousand naira to each of the 200 beneficiaries
In his speech at the event, Olawepo-Hashim explained that his gesture which is to give back to the society has no relationship with his political aspirations.
According to him, “I have been doing this for decades. I have a passion to make society better. That was why I was involved in student unionism in those days. I was also involved in the Committee for Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) and now I’m a
businessman. So, one way to intervene is in the area of economic empowerment.
“What I can do at this time when things are really bad is to show love to underprivileged people in particular, and that we have been doing for decades. We have done training of young people in this digital acquisition over 1000 of them. So this is going to be continuous thing.”
One of the beneficiaries, Luka Dakwoyi, in his remarks, urged the rich in the society to emulate the APC chieftain, saying there are many Nigerians out there in need of succor as the state of the economy bites harder.
Not a few of the participants at the event commended gesture of the Olawepo-Hashim Foundation and called on well meaning Nigerians to emulate the non-partisan approach of Mr. Olawepo-Hashim towards ameliorating the plight of the less privileged.
According to Statista.com, in 2022, an estimated population of 88.4 million people in Nigeria lived in extreme poverty.
The number of men living on less than 1.90 U.S. dollars a day in the country reached around 44.7 million, while the count was at 43.7 million for women. The Nigeria Bureau of Statistics, NBS puts its own figure at 133 million.
