Osun: Eradicating hunger, poverty through soft loans

The market women, informal workers, traders and artisans in Osun State listened very attentively as the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo was making his speech at the Nelson Mandela Freedom Park in Osogbo, the capital of Osun State. The event was the inauguration of the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) Clinic and the Government […]

The market women, informal workers, traders and artisans in Osun State listened very attentively as the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo was making his speech at the Nelson Mandela Freedom Park in Osogbo, the capital of Osun State.

The event was the inauguration of the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) Clinic and the Government Enterprise Empowerment Programme (GEEP). The Vice President was  striving to convince his audience about the sincerity of the federal government on its programmes.   

Madam Fadilat Adegbemi, a trader at the Olu-Ode market in Osogbo gazed into the air and hissed. The 58-year-old woman said: “When it comes to the issue of tail, the frog will say, let us skip it.” She rendered a popular Yoruba adage, and bluntly dismissed the federal government initiative getting to the ordinary market woman like her. 

However, Adegbemi became one of the lucky women selected for a Federal Government’s Empowerment Initiative under the office of the Vice President tagged Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) which was initiated by the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari aimed at eradicating poverty, hunger, unemployment and other related underdevelopment indicators in the country. At least, the initiative targets 50,000 people in Osun. This changed the impression of Adegbemi and other people about the commitment of the current administration at the centre. 

Osinbajo stated that the scheme was initiated by President Muhammadu Buhari in a bid to support small businesses and enterprises, by providing the people soft loans to run their businesses. He said “the present administration led by President Muhammadu Buhari having seen the SME as the powerful economic backbone of any nation ,decided to take the bull by the horn to empower the sector as part of efforts to stimulate and re-energize the Nigerian economy.”

The Vice President was not shy in reiterating his confidence in the  Buhari led government to take Nigeria to greater heights. He said the initiative of the federal government aimed at making life better for the citizenry and change the narratives cut across all sectors, particularly the economic sector. He added that in a bid to turn the economy around, the government realised the need to operate an open government with transparency in which there would be no room for secrecy and corruption. Osinbajo said “Our government came into office on the back of a three-pronged agenda: Ensuring Security, Rebuilding the Economy, and vigorously prosecuting the fight against Corruption.” 

To attain this height, Nigeria joined the Open Government Partnership as the 70th country in 2016 and a national action plan for the country was approved in December 2016, while the implementation started in January 2017. In the national action plan, there are 14 commitments spreading across four thematic areas, including Fiscal Transparency, Anti-Corruption, Access to Information and Citizens engagement.

While declaring the OGP week open, Osinbajo said “there is no doubt that governments who seek to earn and sustain the trust of citizens must learn to maintain high standards of transparency. I am delighted that our efforts in fighting corruption and deepening good governance are being recognized and applauded globally. Nigeria was this year elected into the global steering committee of the Open Government Partnership. The role of the OGP in pushing for and achieving these high standards is evident, and wholly deserving of commendation.

Osinbajo added that with the efforts of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC), who are also members of the OGP National Steering Committee, Nigeria moved 24 places up on the World Bank’s 2017 Doing Business Index. He said the federal government also established the Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit to clean up Federal payroll and pension systems across ministries, departments and agencies and that this has saved the nation over N200b by eliminating ghost workers.

The Vice President said more Nigerians would benefit from such initiatives of the Buhari administration. He noted that if the public fund could be well utilized, the citizens would gain a lot. “As for our fight against corruption, we realized, as Mr. President said, that if we don’t kill corruption, corruption will kill us. Corruption is an existential problem for Nigeria. From all I have seen in government in the past three years, the corruption of the previous five years is what destroyed the Nigerian economy.”

“The London Anti-Corruption Summit in May 2016 was an important milestone for us, in our anti-Corruption efforts, because it helped crystallize various national commitments into an effective multinational anti-corruption coalition.

It was at that Conference that Nigeria committed to joining the OGP, and we fulfilled this commitment in July 2017 when we became the 70th country to join the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an international multi-stakeholder initiative focused on improving transparency, accountability, citizen participation and responsiveness to citizens through technology and innovation,” Osinbajo added.   

The Executive Director African Centre for Leadership, Strategy & Development (Centre LSD) Dr Otive Igbuzor observed that the implementation of OGP in Nigeria would restore the confidence of the citizenry. According to him, “OGP was designed to make sure that governance was not shrouded in secrecy and to enable the citizens to be fully aware and be abreast of the activities of government. It is an international mechanism for ensuring that government engages in reforms and uses  the process to promote open and transparent governance in a way that there will be accountability in governance.”

Also, the National Coordinator of Open Alliance, Mr Abayomi Akinbo said the OGP would ensure service delivery when fully integrated into all aspects of government businesses. “We are bringing the Civil Society  Organizations and the media together to collaborate on efforts that will make the OGP work well so that government would be transparent and citizens would be part of government.”

The Special Adviser to the President on Justice Reform, Mrs Juliet Ibekaku-Nwagwu who is also the National Coordinator of OGP while speaking during a town hall meeting as part of the activities marking the OGP week where heads of various government ministries, department and agencies as well as top government officials were brought face-face with members of Civil Society Organizations (CSO) to discuss issues on national issues reaffirmed the determination of the federal government to imbibe open government and embark on reforms that would assist the economy to grow and change the lives of Nigerians for better. 

“We have created a platform for continuous engagement with Nigerian citizens. The administration of President Buhari is transparent and we want the transparency to spread all over the government institutions. We are working actively to ensure that Nigerian citizens are aware of the fact that the current administration is encouraging transparency and accountability and citizen’s engagement in governance. We are working closes to ensure that everything the government is doing is what the citizens want to see. We want to make sure that the resources of government are used for the benefit of the citizens.”