The Verdict By Olusegun Adeniyi, Email: olusegun.adeniyi@thisdaylive.com
That most Nigerians are going through one of the most depressing periods of their lives is to put the situation mildly. Indeed, there are perhaps only few people in our country today not affected by the economy and the seeming hopelessness that pervades the land. What compounds the problem is that there is no sign in the horizon that the challenge will go away quickly given the choices being made (or perhaps more appropriately, not being made) by those elected to preside over our affairs.

To be honest, this is not the kind of piece I planned to write today. I had wanted to write something to lighten the mood as we enter the festive season. But I feel too depressed by the pervading air of despondency around me to pretend that all is well. Last week, I received the mail below from a young reader in Yobe State who pleaded with me to intervene on an issue involving the Bank of Industry. Since the writer, Musa Sule Damagun, made his case and that of his colleagues so brilliantly, I will just reproduce his mail before I make my comments.

While it is targeted at a specific issue, we can use the experience to look at the state of the national economy today and the growing frustration by our teeming army of young Nigerians: “Early this year, I applied for the federal government Youths Entrepreneurship Scheme (YES) programme under the Bank of industry along with 75,000 other Nigerians in which we submitted business ideas. At the end of the first process, about 3000 applicants were selected and I was one of them. The initial advertisement was that the FG was going to finance the best business ideas through a loan of N5 million to be disbursed by BOI. The conditions were that apart from being a Nigerian, one has to be ready to deposit his/her certificate with the BOI as collateral.

“So immediately after the selection, we were enrolled into an online business training conducted by a Kenyan firm, Africa Management Initiative. That intensive training required many of us in the northeast to relocate to bigger cities where we could access the internet since Boko Haram has vandalized communication facilities in many of our towns. During the online training, we took over 20 courses, wrote exams and submitted assignments for each. Then after the online training, we were again called to attend in-class training for five days in our state capitals. In all these, we had to take care of our transportation and accommodation expenses. The explanation initially was that after the training, we were just going to apply for the loan and deposit our certificates.

“However, the BOI staff at the training began to bring up different stringent conditions to accessing the loan. Every business idea you have, regardless of what you submitted
during your first application, must be about producing something e.g bread, milk, oil etc. You must bring a guarantor who must have a net worth equal to the amount you are asking for. You must have a business structure in which you are already producing something and attach account statement to show your cash flow. And BOI has to visit and assess this business structure before it approves your application. You have to take care of your pre-operating expenses like business registration, rent, logo design as well as registration with regulatory bodies like NAFDAC and SON.

“Finally, even after meeting all the above conditions, BOI will not give you the money in cash. They can only give you your working capital while they will buy the equipment you need. So you have to find suppliers of the kind of equipment you need and ask them to give you quotation and then you send to BOI.

“Given the following stringent conditions, it has become very difficult, if not impossible, for those of us from the North, and perhaps many people also from the south, to access the loan. I know for a fact that of the 24 of us who were successful from Yobe State, none has met the... Please visit the website for the full story.



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