The Bank of Industry (BOI) has said that the micro credit scheme of the Federal Government, TraderMoni was not conceived as a political product to induce voters ahead of 2019 elections.
Speaking during an interactive session with journalists in Abuja on Friday, the BOI’s Executive Director in charge of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), Toyin Adeniyi, said TraderMoni was one of the products developed under the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) targeting petty traders who do not meet the more stringent starting requirements of BVN, bank accounts, market associations and cooperatives required for bigger MarketMoni loans.
The micro credit programme had been described as “vote buying” by former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Transparency International in Nigeria.
Speaking to Daily Trust on phone on Friday, the Chairman of the Observer Group of Transparency International in Nigeria, Awwal Rafsanjani, said the programmed was introduced close to elections with the intent to induce voters as it is not captured anywhere in the Appropriation Act that government would be disbursing N10, 000 to traders.
He said the timing is wrong as “they are doing their campaign and sharing the money. If government was sincere, they would have started it two to three years ago. The timing is wrong.”
Defending the TraderMoni scheme with regards to the proximity of the implementation to the election, Adeniyi said GEEP was initiated in 2016 and first mobile loan was disbursed in 2017.
She said membership of any political party or ownership of Permanent Voter’s Card (PVC) are not criteria for accessing TraderMoni loans.
“Under no circumstance is a PVC or any political indication requested when applying for these loans. We give loans to all qualified Nigerians regardless of faith, gender, status or political leanings,” she said.
She said so far, N12 billion have been disbursed to out of the total N20 billion earmarked for the scheme to 1.2 million petty traders.
