United Nations, AFLI, Oxford Varsity commend GEEP

The United Nations Commission (UNC) in New York has commended Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), a federal government’s microcredit initiative for the successful delivery of micro-credit to Nigerians, especially the youths. It made the commendation at its 62nd session, which held in March.

Also, the African Leadership Institute (AFLI) and Oxford University recognised the programme’s pioneering roles in building a digitised loan operation, positioning of Bank Verification (BVN) as digital collateral to aid financial inclusion, use of facial recognition for de-deduplication, GPS-based mapping and profile of candidates to markets, as well as exhaustive data capture to formalise the informal sector.

Oxford University and the AFLI also awarded the agency’s Chief Operating Officer (COO), Uzoma Nwagba and 22 other emerging African leaders picked across the continent, with 2019 Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellowship.

Selection into the lifelong Fellowship attests Nwagba’s role in delivering one of the world’s most impactful tech-based SMEs intervention programmes and the world’s largest public micro-credit scheme.

A statement issued by AFLI revealed that Nwagba is passionate about running public institutions like ethical businesses. He possesses a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from Harvard and prior to joining GEEP, worked as an Analyst at Goldman Sachs, Product Manager at Microsoft and Senior Associate at African Capital Alliance.

With about two million poor Nigerians accessing credit in the past three years and being brought into financial services of bank account and mobile wallets, there is consensus on the scale of impact the initiative as the largest public microcredit scheme in the world. 54.2 per cent of its beneficiaries are women.

Beneficiaries of the programme affirmed that the contributions of the GEEP to economic empowerment and growth with the effective deployment of MarketMoni, FarmerMoni and TraderMoni credit initiatives have been positive.

A beneficiary of N50, 000 MarketMoni from Kwara State, Mrs. Sherifat Salau who got her loan in 2016, told The Guardian that: “Before receiving GEEP MarketMoni, if I request for a N100,000 loan, I will have to deposit N7,500 before the money is released, besides a N22,000 interest.

“By the time I am done repaying the loan, my goods would have reduced drastically and it stops me from growing the business. The loan has been of help in growing my business. With this loan, I have peace.”

Also testifying, Mallam Amidu, a petty trader at Marna Market in Sokoto, said:“The day I heard about TraderMoni, we came into the market and we saw their officials registering fellow traders.

“The officials registering people for the programme told us that it was a Federal Government loan scheme to empower traders and they asked us if we would like to register. We said yes and we were registered. It will definitely empower my business to buy more stock and make more sales. I am grateful to the government.”