Deji Elumoye
The Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo has said that apart from providing interest-free microcredit loans to petty traders, the various social intervention schemes of the federal government have made a significant impact in the lives of millions of ordinary Nigerians.
Delivering a keynote address yesterday, at the Bank of Industry’s (BOI) ‘Aid for Productivity’ report launch, Osinbajo stated that as part of its determination to boost economic growth, the present administration has also ramped up its support for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) sector, which accounts for close to 50 per cent of Nigeria’s GDP and 76 per cent of the country’s labour force.
He noted the fact that the success of the BOI Growth Platform was the story of, “the Nigerian can-do spirit and the entrepreneurial DNA we carry.
“This is a shining case study of what President Muhammadu Buhari strongly believes: that Nigerians will solve Nigeria’s problems. This is an example of what we can achieve when we unleash the best of our people – especially our young – on the toughest of our challenges, and give them the free-hand to deliver results,” he added.
The BOI Growth Platform includes interventions schemes such as the renowned Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) loans (MarketMoni, FarmerMoni and TraderMoni) – regarded as Africa’s largest fully-digitalised micro-credit scheme, the MSME Survival Fund under the Economic Sustainability Plan (ESP), the North-East Rehabilitation Fund, the recently launched World Bank $750million NG-CARES programme, and state-based interventions, among others.
According to the VP, “this demographic was far too important to ignore. We had to start solving for them, especially having been left far behind historically,” a reason he noted led to the implementation of intervention schemes through the BOI’s Growth Platform for MSMEs.
“What might also not be obvious is the sheer scale of impact that has been achieved with these programmes, as over four million Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises have been direct beneficiaries of the over N150billion deployed in the past.
“Fifty-seven per cent of these MSMEs are owned by Nigerians below 35 years of age, and close to 60 per cent of the beneficiaries are women. What is even less glaring is that the team of Nigerian professionals behind this work is largely young, with an average age of 28 years old.”
Highlighting the transparency and impact of these microcredit schemes, particularly the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP loans – MarketMoni, FarmerMoni and TraderMoni) under the SIPs, Osinbajo recalled his interaction in 2018, with a petty trader, Jafar Abubakar, one of the Tradermoni beneficiaries at Abubakar Gumi Market in Kaduna when he visited to launch the scheme in the State.
The VP further highlighted the nationwide impact of the Administration’s Social Investment Programmes, which he noted was the, “most ambitious social intervention project in Nigeria’s recent history, with a series of people-centric programmes.”
“This is a journey that only began as an idea six years ago: that we can build systems that will serve everybody fairly and justly and bring credibility to government programmes. One of the biggest barriers we identified was the ability to reach people directly, capture and digitalise their information (even if they are illiterate) and process a benefit to them directly in a way that is transparent to all. Our vision set out to solve this.
“For some programmes, the everyday Nigerians were young graduates who would benefit from a direct stipend and employment placement from the government. For others, it would be pupils for whom a reliable meal per day would make the difference between staying enrolled in school or skipping school to earn money for that meal,” he added.
Osinbajo also praised the infrastructure and transparency behind the BOI Growth Platform schemes.
For instance, he recalled his visit to the Growth Platform’s Command Centre, which now has, “22,000 agents, living across all LGAs in Nigeria and equipped with its proprietary mobile technologies, receive mandates to capture and digitalise businesses eligible for its growing suite of programmes.”
