Peter Obi Lambasts Buhari Government’s Trader Moni

The vice presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Peter Obi has faulted the Federal Government’s social investment programme, “Tradermoni”

Peter Obi who was a guest of Governor Ifeanyi Okowa at a two-day Job Creation Exhibition which held at Asaba, Delta State, on Thursday, said the scheme is fundamentally flawed, stressing that the beneficiaries are “untrained, untraceable and inadequately funded”.

According to him, unemployment can only be solved by promoting micro, small and medium enterprises, urging the Federal Government to understudy the Delta State government’s scheme.

His words “The focus of every government is to create employment and you can’t solve unemployment anywhere in the world without promoting micro, small and medium enterprises. So, what Governor Okowa is doing through the job creation office, training people and giving them the funding to start their own business. When you compare it with the Trader Moni initiative by the F.G.I really don’t want to compare them, but how can you give people N10,000 without training, who do we even know that they are giving the money, how would they collect the money?, here we train them and support them with funding. This is happening only in Delta, other government should come and learn from Okowa. So the Federal Government should come to Delta State and learn.”

Earlier, Okowa in his address at the event, said the economic downturn that heralded his assumption of office threatened to abort and derail his campaign promise of prosperity for all Deltans, adding “our novel Job Creation Scheme, geared at nurturing, supporting, supporting and promoting micro, small and medium scale enterprises is triggering off a new wave of economic growth, social inclusion and sustainable development”.

He said 4,253 unemployed youths have become business owners across various skill areas.

Okowa listed the areas of job training to include ICT, Catering , Event Management, Beauty Services, Agricultural Production, and Agricultural Processing.

Others are Food Packaging, Tiling, Plumbing, Electrical Installation among others.

He attributed the annual economic growth rate of the services and agricultural sector to the incremental outputs from STEP, YAGEP and other interventions since 2015.

Okowa said the state is set to become a major grower of rice with the coming on stream of Delta YAGEP Rice.

He said the state’s job creation scheme was endorsed by the World Bank/European Union State Employment and Expenditure for Results (SEEFOR) for funding support.