By Onyeje Nancy-Abutu
Benue Commissioner for Cooperatives and Rural Development, Dr Yanmar Ortese, says the establishment Cooperative Development Fund by the Cooperative Financing Agency of Nigeria (CFAN) would create easy access to scalable and affordable loans for grassroots development.
Ortese stated this on Wednesday in Makurdi during the ninth CFAN summit with the theme “Cooperative Development Fund: A one-stop shop for cooperative financing in Nigeria”.
Represented by the Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Mr Jonathan Asen, the commissioner said that for decades, cooperatives had been the unsung heroes of grassroots development.
He pointed out that the cooperative movement empowers millions of Nigerians, fostering financial inclusion and encouraging a saving culture.
According to him, it is creating shared wealth, but its potential has been capped by persistent lack of access to appropriate, scalable and affordable finance.
“From the smallest thrift and credit societies to large-scale agricultural and housing co-operatives, our movement empowers millions of Nigerians.
“Cooperatives foster financial inclusion, encourage a saving culture, and create shared wealth, but the potential of this movement is continually capped by one persistent challenge: access to appropriate, scalable, and affordable finance,” Ortese said.
He, therefore, expressed joy over what he termed a timely and monumental step designed by CFAN to dismantle the financial bottleneck.
The commissioner said that by pooling resources from member contributions, government support, and development partners, the cooperative development fund would achieve the necessary scale to offer larger, long-term credit that would foster financial best practices and prudential standards across the movement.
He further stated that the introduction of the fund would not only look into the issue of loans but also build a structure that would have access to finance.
The commissioner added the fund would also enhance financial inclusion and digitisation, capacity building and financial literacy, and specialised funding windows.
Ortese, however, said the effectiveness of the fund must hinge on ensuring that its primary source of strength comes from mandatory, tiered contributions from all affiliated financial cooperatives, saying it was the essence of cooperative self-help.
CFAN President, Mr Muhammed Zakaria, said the summit was meant to onboard more cooperative societies in the CFAN programme so as to address the extreme level of poverty pervading the country.
Zakaria stated that various cooperatives would pool their resources into investment to lend to members in order to create enterprise activities in Nigeria.
He said the fund had already taken off, and they would onboard more cooperatives so that they could drive prosperity within the cooperatives.
“The fund will be the backbone for support to members across the country,” Zakaria said.
The Executive Secretary of CFAN, Mr Emmanuel Atama, said members would not need collateral to access the fund and the interest rate would be a single digit.
Speaking to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) after the summit, a participant, Mr Andrew Iyaji, expressed happiness about CFAN efforts to better the lives of cooperative members in Nigeria.
Iyaji said he had approached commercial banks for a loan in the past but could not get it due to stringent conditions, saying that he could now get a loan effortlessly through CFAN.
NAN reports that participants at the event were drawn from the 36 states of the federation, including the FCT. NAN
