ZULUM DISTRIBUTES N1.1B IN 6 MONTHS

 

*To empower the blind, the youths and small businesses

By Yakubu Ahmed-BK

The Borno state Governor Professor Babagana Umara Zulum has distributed a total of N1.1 billion to a number of disabled persons, young men and women and owners of very small businesses who hardly make ends meet due to paucity of capital.

 A total of 7346 of them have already benefitted from the policy. Amongst them are 746 blind persons, 515 lepers and other disabled persons, 2862 young men and women as well as 3323 small business owners who lacked capital of their own and are usually forced by their conditions to take wares on credit and share the profit with their benefactors. 

Borno state Commissioner of Youth Empowerment and Sports Alhaji Sayinna Buba who disclosed these figures while distributing cash to some of the beneficiaries, noted that the policy of empowering those at the lower rungs of the society was not meant for them to spend as they wish, but to help them improve their trades and businesses in order to become useful members of the society who can fend for themselves.

He noted that the Governor’s instruction was for each of the disabled persons to receive N15,000 each month for one year. According to him all the beneficiaries, who have undergone a training process are already proficient in soap making, knitting and perfume making amongst other trades and it is expected that the cash handouts they receive will help greatly to enhance their businesses and thus improve their profit.

He said that while each of the blind persons collected cash due to their handicaps which made going to the bank and processing payment cumbersome, other disable persons such as the 515 lepers and others were paid through banks.

In the same vein, a total of 2862 vulnerable young men and women were equally given the same N15,000 to enable them fund the various trades they have learnt and work hard towards improving their source of income. The idea is to take as many of them off the streets as possible and spare the state the social and security consequences of allowing them to remain idle.

On the part of small business owners who showcase their stuff in either open space or in makeshift shops either in markets, outside markets or on the streets, 1267 of them were given N20,000 each between the Customs roundabout and the flyover bridge while 1956 of the same category of them doing business along the street between the Eagle roundabout and Baga road also got N20,000 each.

The Commissioner also explained that another set of business owners between the Eagle roundabout and 777 Housing Estate have collected a total sum of N50,000 each, amounting to a whooping sum of N500 Million spent on them at a go. In the last six months, a total of N1.1 billion was expended to economically empower the disable, the youths and smallest of the business owners who require small amounts to become independent but who lacked the means to access such or collect loans from banks to fight crunching poverty. 

The Governor, Sayinna Buba said, has instructed that all those who benefitted from the program should be monitored every three months to establish how serious they have put their minds to their trades and to what extent they have operated within the framework of judicious use of the resources to get themselves out of grinding poverty. He said the successes that were observed when the first trench of cash was disbursed encouraged the government to pump in more money to reach others. 

At the end of the day, the objective is to take as many business owners, young men and women as well as disabled people out of poverty. 

The economic dislocation, disruption of small and even big businesses and damage to infrastructure in the more than a decade of the Boko Haram insurgency has fuelled the displacement of millions of people from their homes and businesses which turned them into economic refugees and made them despondent and reliant on handouts from the state government and international donor agencies. This also made life very difficult for disabled persons and young men and women who became susceptible to being cajoled into untoward activities.

The Zulum policy of economic empowerment, a first and largest of its kind in Nigeria is expected to play a significant role in stabilizing the state and quickening the process of rehabilitation and economic revival at this time Borno was fast coming out of the ashes of the mindless insurgency.