Senate yet to get proposal on how FG will spend $350m Abacha loot

• As Reps Panel Probes Funding Of TraderMoni
• NASS Confirms Budget For TraderMoni, Others

The controversial TraderMoni scheme through which the Federal Government disburses funds to petty traders is actually part of the entire budget for the National Social Investment Programmes (NSIP).

The Danjuma Goje-led Senate Committee on Appropriation confirmed that funds for NSIP are captured in the Service Wide Vote for the Presidency.

The NSIP include N-Power, National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP), National Cash Transfer Project (NCTP), and Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP).

GEEP comprises MarketMoni, FarmerMoni and TraderMoni through which credit facilities are made available to micro-businesses.

A source in the committee disclosed that so far, the team was told that the entire NSIP had gulped over N30bn since it was introduced in 2016.

The committee could, however, not confirm whether or not the Federal Government had submitted any proposal on how it intended spending the $350m Abacha loot.

Some lawmakers had faulted the executive arm of government’s decision to share the money to the poor and vulnerable persons.

The Federal Government, last year, announced that the money would be used on its Conditional Cash Transfer scheme to support the poor.

However, the House of Representatives Committee on Finance is going ahead with its probe of how the Presidency sourced monies to prosecute the TraderMoni loan scheme.

The Committee is set to raise the issue when it interfaces with officials of the Federal Ministry of Finance and their counterpart in the Presidency overseeing the programme on the 2019 budget defence session during the week.

Chairman of the House Committee on Finance, Mr. Babangida Ibrahim, who made this known, however, believed that the funds might have been approved by the National Assembly under NSIP.