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… As Staff Cooperative Set Up Microfinance Bank
Acting managing director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Dr. Joi Nunieh, has applauded the vision and quality behind the setting up of a micro finance bank by the NDDC Staff Cooperative Investment and Credit Society Limited.
Speaking in Port Harcourt during the sensitization on the proposed micro finance bank, Dr. Nunieh, said one of the priority of the commission at this point in time is to ensure more entrepreneur ventures are set up in the Niger Delta region as a way to mitigate the effect of rising job insecurity in the country, stressing that as a body, there is no going back on the verification of all projects by the commission recently embarked.
She said in a bid to ensure accountability and justice, frivolous scholarship schemes initiated in the past had been stopped, hinting that from now on brilliant children from the catchment areas of the commission will be given opportunity in terms of scholarship, and not what happened in the past were children of the rich were given preferential treatment against the rule.
Nunieh further hinted that agriculture will top priority on the commission’s plans for the region, even as she restated her commitment to identifying with the vision of the NDDC Staff Cooperative Investment and Credit Society Limited and described the vision for setting up the microfinance bank as the first of its kind and a welcomed development.
She stressed that henceforth, the commission will ensure that communities where NDDC projects are cited take full responsibility in protecting the project, especially with the ongoing verification exercise.
The acting MD said that but for the intervention of President Muhammadu Buhari, the commission would have been dead, and vowed to stop at nothing to ensure that the commission is revamped no matter the level of blackmail and campaign of calumny against moves to reposition the body, as she solicited the help and cooperation from the people of the region.
Earlier, president of the NDDC Staff Cooperative Investment and Credit Society Limited, Mr. Franklin Essien, recalled that at the body’s AGM held on December 9, 2017 in Port Harcourt, hard decisions were made as regards the rapid transformation of the cooperative society to a world class organization.
He noted that part of that meeting was the proposal geared towards floating a unit microfinance bank within the Port Harcourt metropolis to serve as a springboard to generate economic opportunities for the teeming members and the active poor in our environment.
Mr. Essien said that based on that vision and the unanimously acceptance of the proposal, action for the registration and licensing of the one unit microfinance bank began with the engagement of consultants to evaluate the feasibility of the investment for achieving this task.
He added that the CBN, which is the regulatory body effected an upward review of the minimum capital requirement for the licensing of one unit MFBs in Nigeria from N20,000,000.00 (twenty million) to N200,000,000.00 (two hundred million). This, he said, regrettably slowed down the progress of the consummation of the project as cash flow then was not enough to meet the new capital requirement.
In his speech, the director, Finance Policy and Regulation at the CBN, represented by Mr. Mike A. Baba, assured of the apex bank’s support on the project, stressing that the platform, the NDDC Staff Cooperative Society Limited, if managed well will fly and described the vision as noble and achievable.