N60b soft loans coming for one million traders

No fewer than one million traders and

artisans are billed to get a soft loan of

N60,000 each this year as part of the safety nets for the poor in Budget 2016, it was learnt at the weekend.

An insight into the budget estimates, which the Senate is still dilly dallying over, revealed that this plan will cost an

estimated N60 billion.

Yesterday, Senior Special assistant to

President Muhammadu Buhari on National Assembly matters Senator Ita Enang confirmed that the president had written a letter to the National Assembly on the budget which is expected to be read by the presiding officers during plenary tomorrow.

A senior federal government official at the weekend described the controversy in the Senate regarding two versions of the proposed budget as a “distraction and a storm in a tea-cup.”

The official added that the budget estimates are a bunch of proposals which would only become sacrosanct relatively after becoming an appropriation. “To now have all this hue and cry on alleged versions; and switched copies is not just a distraction, but a storm in a tea-cup.”

Ready for the implementation of the

proposal among others in the budget, the

official confirmed the appointment of Mrs

Maryam Uwais as a Special Adviser to the

President working the Office of the Vice

President, who will be in charge the

programme.

There are five other social investment plans of the Buhari administration already

provided for in the budget with about N500 billion to be spent, which is nine per cent of the total budget.

These schemes are:

The teach Nigeria scheme where the

Federal Government plans to directly hire

500,000 graduates as teachers. Under the scheme government will hire, train and deploy the graduates to help beef up the quality of teachers in public schools

across the nation. The teachers will be

picked on state by state basis.

The youth employment agency where

between 300,000 to 500,000 non

graduate youths will be taken through in

skill acquisition programmes and

vocational training, for which they will be

paid stipends during the training, with the plan that they would then become self- productive members of their

communities. The selection of the youths

for this scheme will also be on state by

state basis.

The conditional cash transfer where

government will pay directly N5,000 per

month to one million extremely poor

Nigerians on the condition that they have

children enrolled in school and are

immunised.

The homegrown school feeding in which

the federal government will serve one

meal a day to primary school pupils and

in many cases expected to be done in

collaboration with state governments.

This programme has international support

from the Imperial College of the United

Kingdom among other international

agencies.

The free education for science,

technology and mathematics students

where tuition will be paid for about

100,000 STEM students in tertiary

institutions in the country. The scheme is

expected to cost government about N5

billion.