Kwara NSIP Official Debunk Media Reports Over Beneficiaries Data

The Kwara State Focal Person for the NSIP, Hajia Bashirah Abdulrazaq-Sanusi, has debunked media reports which quoted her as saying hat there was no record of beneficiaries of the TraderMoni scheme.

On Thursday, some news outlets, particularly Sahara reporters, had quoted Abdulrazaq-Sanusi in a report stating that “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.”

However, on Friday, in response to the claim, the NSIP state official said she was misquoted. She clarified that she never made such a statement, even though she did make comments on the TraderMoni scheme.

According to her, “We do have the records, and that is exactly what I told the reporter. I said we are persuading the beneficiaries to repay and we wanted to use the media. We said they can go to any commercial bank; as soon as they identify themselves as beneficiaries, their data will pop up. How can that be if we don’t have their data? I was misquoted.”

To buttress Abdulrazaq-Sanusi’s clarification, the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), on Friday, on its official Twitter handle, stated that the Kwara State Governor, Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq, had visited its Command Centre.

According to the GEEP tweet, “The Governor interacted with the live reporting dashboard where he saw digitized loan records of over 2 million beneficiaries nationwide and 41,300 beneficiaries in Kwara State.

“The Governor expressed delight with the strong technology framework which GEEP is using to profile, register and disburse loans to qualified candidates. He also expressed interest in setting up a replica model for Kwara State. #GEEP #tradermoni #marketmoni #farmermoni”

Under TraderMoni, petty traders and artisans receive interest-free loans starting from N10,000. Once they pay back the sum, they become eligible for higher loans up to N100,000.

Over two million petty traders have benefitted from TraderMoni and other GEEP microcredit schemes, which is executed by the Bank of Industry.