Report mute on Osinbajo’s TraderMoni toursim, bursts $1b lost to grey MSMEs schemes
…As Aisha Buhari’s revelation deepens validity of report in the North
The report of the Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Economic Development Initiative (SEEDi), an independent development research group, has raised serious question on the reality and resultant effects of key Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) programmes carried out by the Federal Government in the last four years.
Scanty answers to the question forced SEEDi to posit that Nigeria lost over $1 billion to corruption-related MSMEs programmes within the first term of the ending administration after all.
The report is coming as the wife of the President; Mrs Aisha Buhari recently averred that over N500billion spent across the 19 northern states on all the Federal Government Social Investment Schemes (SIPs) may have gotten into the wrong hands as there is nothing to show for it.
Speaking in Adamawa State recently, Mrs Buhari decried the level of poverty within the north and therefore queried the efficacy and resultant effects of all the billions of naira spent by her husband’s government within the period under review.
Though the SEEDi report maintained a technical silence on the impacts of the SIPs, especially the TraderMoni and MarketMoni personally disbursed by the Office of the Vice President with Prof Yemi Osinbajo leading the tour of several states in sharing the money across markets especially at the eve of the 2019 elections, the report argued that the $1bn said to be lost in the last four years exceeds Nigeria’s capital expenditure on health and education combined for the period covering 2014 to 2018.
The calculation is however, based on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) official rate of N306/$1, the $1billion translates into about N306 billion.
SEEDi document titled; ‘Stolen dreams: How corruption negates government assistance to Nigeria’s small businesses,’ was powered by the Carnegie Endowment International Peace, in collaboration with the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA).
Lists of the $1bn declared missing and or unaccounted facilities given away to SMEs stretched from disbursements to small businesses through legislators’ constituency projects, the Cassava Bread Initiative, and various loans schemes such as the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Fund, and the Agriculture Credit Guarantee Scheme.
Key observation made by the Lead Partner of SEEDi, Celestine Okeke, was that “The Nigerian Government’s MSME programmes and agencies need to demonstrate basic transparency and accountability, adding that this can be achieved through better use of established mechanisms and existing laws”.
