N1.6bn women fund laying fallow in bank

Most women are still struggling to make ends meet despite an N1.6 billon empowerment fund put in place by the Federal Government to assist women empower themselves and their families. The N1.6 billion National Women Empowerment Fund (NAWEF) is presently lying idle in the Bank of Industry and most women have not been able to […]

Most women are still struggling to make ends meet despite an N1.6 billon empowerment fund put in place by the Federal Government to assist women empower themselves and their families.

The N1.6 billion National Women Empowerment Fund (NAWEF) is presently lying idle in the Bank of Industry and most women have not been able to meet all the necessary requirements to access the fund.

The Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Senator Aisha Jummai Alhassan, made this known while speaking during a one-day sensitization programme for wives of governors, wives of local government council chairmen and women of elective positions on the effective implementation of the fund.

The minister noted that despite the various interventions to make the funds accessible, states were finding it difficult to access it by meeting all the terms and conditions, especially the repayment of the loans.

She explained that the Federal Government had decided to implement the fund in eight pilot states, which she said listed as, “Abia (South East), Awka Ibom (South South), Osun (South West) and Nasarawa (North Central), Jigawa (North West), Adamawa, Yobe and Borno (North East).”

“Unfortunately all together we have gotten only 25,740 applications from all the eight pilot states, when actually we expect 80,000 from all the states,” she stated.

She said: “The overall objective of the NAWEF programme is to provide access to financial services for women involved in micro and small scale enterprises to scale up their businesses. 

“The programme is also a revolving loan facility that is interest and collateral free, requiring beneficiaries to repay within a specified period of six months or more depending on the kind of enterprise or business to enable others benefit from the scheme,” Senator Aisha said.

The women affairs minister added that to sustain the fund, certain conditions have been put in place which include, “Women guaranteeing each other as members of same cooperative group and women ensuring commitment to repayment as scheduled,” adding that those were “less stringent conditions to access the fund to make repayment easy for beneficiaries.”

She however  warned that defaulters would be sanctioned by black listing their Bank Verification Numbers (BVN) and revoking their group’s certificates which meant that they could not do any business as a group again. 

“Defaulting beneficiaries will never be able to do any banking transactions in Nigeria,” she said.

The deputy country representative of UN Women (United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women), Adji Dates Ndiaye, said that Nigeria should take the lead in empowering women in Africa because of its populous nature.

She commended the Federal Government for setting aside the NAWEF fund to empower women, saying that most donor agencies put their funds in specific intervention like supporting pregnant women and children or for women in conflict-torn areas while other women who need support to grow their business were not included.

She added that UN Women would help build the capacities of women to succeed in accessing the loans.

Meanwhile, the Osun State Commissioner of Women Affairs and Social Development, Hajia Latifat Abiodun, said that sending the application and verifying the names had been quite challenging.

“Most women in the rural areas do not have bank accounts and find it difficult to open one, which makes their application hard to be selected,” she said.

Yobe has the highest applications with 3,832, followed closely by Jigawa with 3,655, Abia 3,456, Adamawa 3,269, Nasarawa 3,243, Borno 2,659, Awka Ibom 1,597 and Osun 1,029.