By Ismail M. Kabir.
Amidst rising inflation of foodstuff and essential commodities across the country, there is hope of relief for Kogi youth, women and farmers as the second phase of the Government Enterprise Empowerment Project (GEEP 2.0) is set to take off at the Kogi State Social Investment Office.
The focal person, Kogi State office of the National Social Investment Programme, Honourable Abdulkareem Onyekehi Suleiman, hinted newsmen on Wednesday in Lokoja following a virtual meeting conveyed by the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, for all State Focal Persons of NSIP on the modalities for the roll-out of the re-modelled GEEP scheme.
Onyekehi said that the meeting was necessary to prepare stakeholders ahead of another season of empowerment for Nigerians in continuous fulfilment of the mandates of the social investment programmes.
According to Onyekehi, GEEP is a significant component of the National Social Investment Programme which focuses on improving the working capital of traders and market women.
He recalled the maiden phase of the programme where the sum of N50,000 each was disbursed to MarketMoni beneficiaries while the Tradermoni of N10,000 each was disbursed to thousands of petty traders across Kogi state between the years 2017 and 2018.
The focal person said that the upcoming second phase of the programme is remodelled to include youths, women, artisans and local farmers as potential beneficiaries of the sum of N10,000 to N300,000 each.
Onyekehi, however, advised that since the programme focuses on groups on same value chains, it was necessary for interested beneficiaries to either register or join an existing cooperative society, market clusters and associations to ease their enumeration.
He further assured potential beneficiaries across Kogi state to be hopeful of getting selected as long as they owned a business or small trade that can be identified by the enumerators as the enrolment exercise would commence before the end of August, 2021.
Hon. Onyekehi commended President Muhammadu Buhari for his unrelenting efforts at improving the lives of the common citizens while also appreciating Governor Yahaha Bello for providing a beffiting office and adequate support for the effective implementation of social investment programmes for the good people of Kogi state.
