Women N1.6bn idle fund

In spite of government’s efforts and determination to empower women and make them active players in the county’s economy, it was disappointing to hear that N1.6bn National Women Empowerment Fund (NAWEF) is lying idle in the Bank of Industry (BoI). Most women, it was reported, have not been able to access the funds. This revelation was made by the Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Senator Aisha Jummai Alhassan, while speaking recently at a one-day sensitisation programme on the implementation of the Fund.

The sensitization programme was organized for wives of governors, wives of local government council chairmen and women in elective positions. The minister explained that government decided to implement the Fund in eight pilot states: Abia (South East), Akwa Ibom (South South), Osun (South West), Nasarawa (North Central), Jigawa (North West), Adamawa, Yobe and Borno (North East).

The minister lamented that “only 25,740 applications were received from all the eight pilot states” when actually 80,000 applications were expected. The Osun state commissioner for women affairs and social development, Hajia Latifat Abiodun, had complained about the fact that “most women in rural areas do not have bank accounts as they also find it difficult to open one, making their applications hard to be selected”.

Jumai Alhassan declared that the overall objective of the NAWEF programme was to provide access to financial services for women involved in micro and small scale enterprises to scale up their businesses. According to her, “the programme is 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” they engaged in.

To sustain the Fund, the minister said certain conditions have been put in place, including, “women guaranteeing each other as members of same cooperative group”. She added that the conditions are not stringent. The minister further warned that defaulting beneficiaries would be sanctioned by blacklisting their Bank Verification Numbers (BVNs). Such defaulters would risk revocation of their group’s certificates.

This NAWEF initiative of government is commendable. The conditions laid down for accessing the fund are flexible enough to ease access. The measures stipulated for sanctioning defaulting beneficiaries are also sufficiently deterring. The most crucial challenge of this programme appears to rest more with the approach. If the recent one-day sensitization pogramme was actually meant for small and medium scale women entrepreneurs, the assembly of wives of governors and wives of local government chairmen who weren’t the beneficiaries, was therefore, inapt. That was a case of using wrong people for a worthy initiative. More so, these VIP women have limited technical roles to play in educating and sensitizing the target group of women entrepreneurs.

As a government scheme, directors of women affairs and social development at the state and local government levels are more concerned with the NAWEF than governors’ wives and wives of local government chairmen who are not government employees. They lack appropriate mandate to carry out the required sensitization of women entrepreneurs. The minimal number of applications decried by the minister could be the result of a lowlevel awareness of the programme among women entrepreneurs.

To tackle the challenge of women not having bank accounts, we advise managers of the Fund to collaborate with Micro-Finance Banks (MFBs) and encourage them to extend their services to rural and remote communities. Regardless of the number of applications at hand, we encourage government to approve and release funds to those who have fulfilled the conditions for benefitting from the NAWEF. An efficient monitoring mechanism should exist to ensure that funds accessed are utilised for the purposes they were provided.

We urge managers of the Fund to avert any possible attempt by political office holders, senior civil servants or women politicians to hijack the scheme from reaching the real group of beneficiaries.