Kwara expends N851m on youths, women, farmers’ empowerment

In order to alleviate the sufferings and reduce poverty in the state, Kwara State government says it has spent N851 million on empowerment and development of youths, farmers and women at the rural areas across the 16 local government councils of the state.

Segun Soewu, technical adviser of Kwara State Small and Medium-scale Enterprises, disclosed this in Ilorin, the state capital, ‎while speaking with BusinessDay, saying empowerment of youths and women was undertaken as a result of the governor’s interest to improving living standard of Kwarans.

He said: “With the release of N851 million by the state government, we have assisted 1,848 cooperatives, individual beneficiaries. We are opening up window for rural women empowerment. His Excellency, Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed has approved N41 million for that. As time goes on, we will disburse more to our people.

“The scheme, established in 2012, has been trying to ensure that the less privilege are given sense of belonging through government assistance.

“We are working with 14 micro finance banks across the state. Our operations based on trade and commerce, agriculture, artisan and transport. We try to get feedback from the people and in 2015, we discovered that our boys are still not doing so well thus, we expanded our transport window, and his Excellency released N25.09 million for purchase of 193 motor bikes and another N62.5 million for purchase of 25 buses.

“For cooperatives, government released the sum of N28. 7 million for the people, to be accessed and pay back. Afterwards, we discovered that we were not able to attend to people, who are up to 3 to 5 million for businesses, then we sourced for more fund from idle fund at Bank of Industry and we were able to secure N141 million and that helped us service those in need of money up to N5 million.”

While speaking on government’s effort to transform agriculture and agribusiness, Soewu revealed that N100 million had been proposed for maize production and fishpond.

“The e-papers have been processed and we are hoping that before the end of the month, the work will commence. Also, we have got approval to do modular power grade, starting up with a village in Ilorin. We got support from Bank of Industry and we are targeting July,” he said.