A business owner named Giovanni Ifedi-Williams on social media has accused the Buhari-osinbajo administration of diverting funds for business owners while claiming it funded 5,000 entrepreneurs.
This is coming after the former governor of Anambra state and 2023 Labour Party Presidential candidate Peter Obi’s statement on the ineffective ₦1 Trillion by Development Bank of Nigeria—DBN–to Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in Nigeria since 2015.
Obi had claimed that over 80% entrepreneurs are unaware of the Bank’s very existence. “The level of knowledge about the existence and utility of such an institution is directly proportional to its impact on the people it is meant to serve.”
Ifedi-Williams on Thursday via X accounted that DBN only used them for photographic evidence without funding their businesses, as opposed to the money released by World Bank to finance 5,000 MSMEs.
He revealed: “I am one of the entrepreneurs that DBN parades for optics, falsely claiming they funded our enterprises. To be clear, neither I nor my colleagues received any funding from DBN.
“What they offered us was “capacity building training,” some glossy certificates of participation, and mouth-watery meals each day for the week the training lasted.
He further disclosed that they only wrote exams, meet the coordinators for a physical meet and greet session, while they were awarded certificates, no funding of any type was seen and the said accused administration went ahead to publicized that it has empowered 5,000 Nigerians.
In his words: “This is exactly how the N50 billion YouWinConnect fund, provided by the World Bank to finance 5,000 MSMEs, was diverted under the Buhari government in 2018. We went through online exams, 5,000 of us qualified for physical meet-and-greet session held at zonal level.
“And as usual, in the end, all we got were certificates. Next, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo went on Brekete Radio to publicly declare that their government had funded 5,000 entrepreneurs through the YouWinConnect program.
“I think I am the lone voice who has been speaking out against how government institutions exploit Nigerian entrepreneurs as pawns to fraudulently access & divert funds. Someday, we will have time to confront this fraudulent system and its actors. Till then, let’s keep managing.” Ifedi-Williams added.
In Obi’s calculation “If indeed such an amount was deployed to support enterprises, the results should be evident. For instance, if $1 billion were disbursed in small loans averaging about $,1000 each, it could have supported at least 1 million small businesses.
“The ripple effect of this would have been no less than 3 million new jobs, with visible growth in enterprises, an improved economy, and measurable progress in lifting people out of poverty.
“So the critical question is: if ₦1 trillion truly left the coffers of DBN to empower Nigerians, where did the money go?” the former governor queried.
—By: Adeoye Olorunseun Elizabeth
“I am one of the entrepreneurs that DBN parades for optics, falsely claiming they funded our enterprises.”–Ifedi-Williams