The sheer number of people—5,889 people across the 21 local government areas—could have made a spectacle of President Muhammadu Buhari’s social security handouts of N550,000 covid-19 loan before the poorest of the poor in Kebbi.
But Justice Minister Abubakar Malami stole the show—even from the Humanitarian Affairs Minister Sadiya Umar Farouk who is in charge.
The scheme is Targeted Credit Facility Loan, but Malami took all the credit while launching on the 30th anniversary of the state August 28.
“I have been consulting Kebbi state indigenes holding executive positions at the federal level on the most effective and efficient ways to serve our community, as a representative of the people of Kebbi state at the Federal Executive Council and for the purposes of elaborate stakeholder engagement and community outreach,” he said.
Then he droned on about how the need to access government’s interventions made him engage and work with some federal officers from the state to establish Kadi Malami Foundation (KMF) and Khadimiyya for Justice and Development Initiative (KDI).
According to him, the NGOs are to support the citizens of the state with social amenities and diverse economic empowerment programmes.
To the illiterate farmers and traders listening, the covid-19 palliatives could have come from Malami’s NGOs.
However, the humanitarian effort is part of the federal government support for the most vulnerable Nigerians that went through the 2019 pandemic.
Other programmes are the Conditional Cash Transfer, Achor Borrowers, TraderMoni, and others.
But Malami seized the moment to reel out a mishmash of federal programmes as though they were his NGO activities.
Malami noted the NGOs were able to empower more than 2,457 cassava farmers, 2,008 rice farmers across the state, to access soft loans under the Anchor Borrower Programme through the NGOs.
“The NGOs also facilitated enrolment of 3,000 Kebbi indigenes as beneficiaries of the Federal Government Special Public Works intervention, as well as the Youth and Students’ Support Programmes, including the distribution of JAMB forms to 1,000 candidates to enable them pursue tertiary education.
“The NGOs also struggled to secure loans, ranging from one N1 million to N5 million each to indigenes of the state.
“This is in addition to several donations that were channeled to those severally affected by the Kebbi flooding, boat mishap and other natural disasters, as well as facilitation of the nomination and payment of the much- needed Survival Fund to the needy in the state,” Malami added.