By Victoria Ojeme

A World Bank women community group of about 85,506 members have received N60, 000 for small business development under Nigeria For Women Project (NFWP).

Head of Operations, NFWF, Taraba State Coordinating Unit, Kunaku Auta stated this at a meeting while assessing the impact of the project in the state.

The NFWP is an initiative of the federal government with the support of the World Bank designed to empower rural women, through building social capital, livelihood programmes, innovation and partnership, project monitoring, evaluation and learning.

In Taraba State, the project is piloted in Bali, Zing and Tabum local government areas out of the 16 local government areas of the state, with plans in place to extend it to the remaining areas in the coming days.

According to the Taraba State Coordinator of the project, the NFWP started in 2018 but the full implementation kicked off in 2021.

“We have a target of 20,000 women affinity groups (WAGs) across the three implementation LGAs of the state. So far, we have reached our target of 3,600 WAGs and we have given an addition of 4 WAGs.  In terms of membership, the target was 54,000 but we were able to get 85,506 members in the women affinity groups across the three implementing LGAs.

“And in terms of the grant, already we have commenced payment of individual livelihood grants and so far we’ve developed about 30,000 business plans for our women in the three implementing LGAs and we have so far paid 19,551 and average payment is around N59,000 per individual, some got up to N60,000 some less than N60,000.

“So that is what we have done so far in the state and different trainings were also carried out for the women like financial education, to train the women on how to manage their finance, then we also train them on business skills, like equip them on how to develop their business plans and also run their businesses.

“Then we train them on gender and life skills, where they can also be able to take care of themselves because if you look at them, they are rural women and some of them cannot take very good care of themselves, so with those training they were able to take care of themselves.

“We train them also on GRM because we know you cannot run a project like this without issues of grievances coming on board. So they are trained and we also share with them our top three lines that they can send in their complains to, both beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries can register their complains and we have our GRM focal persons that are attending to it and if they can’t they escalate to us and if we can’t, we also escalate to the federal level,” Auta said.

In terms of disbursements, Auta said “We have our criteria because you must have made a certain percentage, a business plan will be developed for you and one of this is the attendance. You must have had at least 75 per cent attendance and secondly you must have saved for at least four months, then you are able to develop a business plan.

On the challenges, he said “one of the paramount challenge we had while starting this programme is the skepticism of the women joining the groups because a lot of programmes have been coming and some of them they have defrauded a lot of people, so for us to be to convince them to be part of this programme was not easy.”

“Also timing because when they are formed in groups, they meet weekly, so sometimes like during raining season, most of these women are farmers, so for them to be available for meetings, so during raining season they had to change their time to a more suitable time again and that can also affect the facilitator because maybe the time they might be choosing next might clash with another group that are meeting that same time and same day, so these are some of the challenges.

“We are all aware of the insecurity that bedeviled the nation, so Taraba is not an exception to that. For now as we are talking we have about three wards in Takum that are inaccessible, so that has also displaced our WAP members. But for some of them that came into Takum town, they were able to still group themselves together and they informed their facilitator who continued to take them in Takum there.

“Then also in terms of support from the state government because the state government is also supposed to give a counterpart contribution because there are some expenses that cannot be borne by the either fund, so it has to be by the state government contribution and that was not forthcoming.

“It was later that the state government was able to release up to 200million for the project of which yet you still have to follow up with the governor to give approval for utilization of that amount and I think it is just of recent that we are getting that approval also to use the counterpart fund. So these are the challenges we face along the line.”

In an interview, the Chairman, Zing local government, Andrew Luka Zanya, said the NFWP came at the right time, adding: “Before then our women were experiencing poverty, I can refer to it as abject poverty.

“Most of them when they wake up in the morning they don’t know where to go, what they will eat for the day. Some of them keep on borrowing from individuals and after a time this becomes a big burden because they don’t have any means of paying back.”

He said “NFWP has alleviated the suffering of our women, it has enabled most of them to learn how to save through the WAGs loans scheme, they can now operate a business or they can now borrow loans internally within the repayments system.

“So, it has helped in improving the overall standard of living of our women, including their husbands because that effect is moving on to the whole family.

“What the government could not do, the project has done. It has gone a long way in paving the way for true national development, because there can never be true national development without developing the man.

“Subsequently, these women are going to transfer the knowledge and skills they have acquired to the rest of the society. They can now engage in many projects, save money on this project and invest.”