‘Beneficiaries think TraderMoni is national cake, unwilling to repay loans’

Bashirah Abdulrazaq-Sanusi, Kwara state focal person for the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), says some beneficiaries of TraderMoni are reluctant to repay loans.

Abdulrazaq-Sanusi disclosed on Wednesday that about 10,000 people benefited from the programme in the state with over N1.3bn disbursed to them.

The TraderMoni programme, which was launched in 2018, is designed to provide soft loans of N10,000 to boost small scale businesses.

The programme was formerly managed by the office of Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo.

According to the PUNCH, Abdulrazaq-Sanusi said some of the beneficiaries treat the loan as “national cake” and are unwilling to pay back.

She also said there are no contact record of some beneficiaries, making it difficult to track them.

“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,” Abdulrazaq-Sanusi said.

She also said following the termination of N-Power rogramme by the federal government in July, the Kwara state government replicated the youth empowerment programme in the state, codenamed K-Power, in order not to throw beneficiaries into the labour market after exiting N-Power.

But she added that some N-Power beneficiaries were showing “lukewarm attitude” to being reabsorbed into the state’s ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).