Nasarawa denies disbursing N500m youths revolving funds to cronies

The Nasarawa State Government, on Friday, denied allegations that it had disbursed the state’s N500 million Youth Revolving Fund Scheme loans to individuals based on favouritism.

The state government, in collaboration with the Bank of Industry, had on October 27, 2022, approved a matching fund of N250 million naira each to help in boosting the micro, small and medium scale enterprises across the 13 Local Government Areas of the state.

The General Manager of the Nasarawa State Human Capital Development Agency, Habiba Balarabe-Suleiman, while speaking with journalists in Lafia on Friday, said the allegations by some of the unsuccessful applicants of the scheme were not true.

According to Balarabe-Suleiman, since the programme commenced, the agency had ensured that the processes were strictly followed to enable only deserving applicants access the loans.

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She, however, acknowledged challenges in the course of screening the Batch A applicants and disbursement of funds, but maintained that the integrity of the agency had never been compromised since she was appointed to oversee the agency.

She said: “the YRFS project was mainly designed to provide soft loans to youths in order to take-off and expand their businesses. This is because we discovered that white-collar jobs are difficult to get, so we decided to train graduates in the state, and help them to secure access to finance to enable them start their own businesses.

“It was also discovered that contrary to the view that most graduates would prefer jobs, graduates of the employability and entrepreneurship training were more disposed to starting their own businesses, which made the Nasarawa State Human Capital Development Agency see the need to provide alternative support for the graduates of the training programme.

“You would recall that the Bank of Industry and the Nasarawa State government signed a Memorandum of Understanding to boost businesses in the state. So far, the agency has received 89 applications, with 42 applicants making up Batch A while Batch B had 47 applicants.

“Out of the 42 applications received in Batch A, 10 were successful after the screening exercise meant to check the viability of the proposal and to ascertain originality, as well as the level of understanding of the business by the applicants.”

Balarabe-Suleiman further stated that the three stages in the screening process had always been strictly followed to ensure that the loan recommendations are adequate for each of the successful applicants before the disbursement of funds.

She, therefore, warned that false informations aimed at tarnishing the image of the state governor, Abdullahi Sule and the agency will not be tolerated, adding that the agency’s legal team were fully ready to institute legal actions against false alarmists in the state.

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