Nigeria’s economically vulnerable population who have been most hit by the recent COVID-19 headwinds are expected to get relief following the launch of the second phase of the Federal Government social investment programme.
The Government Enterprise Empowerment Programme (the GEEP 2.0) is structured to effectively deliver soft loans and skills to a wide range of unemployed citizens including persons living with disabilities, marginalized women and unemployed youth amongst other vulnerable groups in our society, according to the Federal Government.
The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq, has called on vulnerable Nigerians to come forward and receive interest-free loans under the just launched GEEP 2.0.
GEEP is one of the four legs of the social investment schemes by the present administration and is designed to give collateral-free and interest-free loans to poor and vulnerable people identified at the bottom of the economic pyramid, including persons with disabilities. The packages are in three categories – Tradermoni, Marketmoni and Farmermoni.
At the unveiling held at the International Conference Centre Abuja on Tuesday, the Minister said “With President Muhammadu Buhari’s gracious approval of expansion to provide loans to an additional one million beneficiaries with emphasis to targeting smallholder farmers in the year 2020/2021, the GEEP has been restructured and is being flagged-off today as GEEP 2.0.”
“Today marks the beginning of an effort to re-engineer and re-position a program that will widely empower the people. I urge you to continue to push and work hard until we touch and change the lives of poor Nigerians in the remotest parts of the country,” Vice President, Yemi Osibanjo, who was represented by the Special Adviser to the President on Political matters Babafemi Ojodu, said.
The program is expected to empower Nigerian farmers especially in the rural areas, deliver rapid scale-up of Farmer Moni to agroprenuership for increased agricultural produce, food security and job creation.
Market Moni targets the under-privileged and marginalized women in the communities while TraderMoni aims to empower and uplift under-privileged and vulnerable youths, scavengers, market wheelbarrow boys, orphans and youth with special needs.
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The minister said the restructured GEEP includes an increase in the loan portfolio of TraderMoni and MarketMoni loans from N10,000 to N50,000, while the FarmerMoni is now N300,000.
According to her, there is also the provision of a value chain and the creation of a digital marketplace (E-platform) for beneficiaries to sell their products.
The Head of the GEEP Cluster, Zainab Munsawa, assured that the new and invigorated GEEP 2.0 has been re-programmed to touch more lives.
“The new organizational structure and model of implementation was introduced to focus on surplus loan amounts and new target beneficiaries dedicated exclusively to empower the poor and vulnerable women, marginalized youth with enterprising skills, giving special consideration to agricultural empowerment in rural areas,” Munsawa said.
Corruption, kickbacks, fraud and partisanship were some of the barriers that prevented the flagship programme of the social intentional scheme from attaining full potential.
An investigation by BusinessDay in 2018 across four markets in Mushin, Ketu, Abule-Egba and Ikotun revealed the leakages that restricted the impact of the programme.
Checks by BusinessDay showed that Tradermoni, one of the most popular categories of the intervention scheme, may have fallen short of its secondary target to reduce financial exclusion.
The Federal Government had stated that one of the objectives of the programme was to deepen Nigeria’s financial inclusion rate. However, a survey by BusinessDay revealed many beneficiaries didn’t continue using the bank accounts opened to receive the loans and others did not even open any bank accounts.
As a result of not having bank accounts, some of the beneficiaries of the first phase of GEEP were forced to strike a 50/50 deal with agents to receive N5,000 (out of N100) while others had to consent to a 70 to 30, 90 to 10 and worse of all 95 to 5 sharing formula. Repayment was also a key challenge. The data of the loans that were repaid are yet to be published.
Enumerated in September 2018, Muyinat Ajibulu received a message congratulating her that her loan was ready for collection around 3:17 pm on October 11, 2018, from Aku, a mobile money outlet assigned to manage the disbursement process of the loan. In the message were instructions on how to get the N10,000.
But shockingly, she received another message notifying her of a fund transfer to a strange account two hours later and that was the last she saw of the loan.
“Others have received the money and are rejoicing. I want to rejoice as well. With it, I can buy a bag of salt at N3500 and gain almost N2, 000 from it. I don’t plan to return any money. I may when I get the next one,” she explained.
