Senator Advocates More Funding For NIRSAL Microfinance Bank

Senator Ayo Akinyelure has advocated for continuous funding of NIRSAL Micro- Finance Bank to enable the bank’s credit facility get to more MSMEs operating in Nigeria.

Lauding the management of the bank for doing a good job, the Senator representing Ondo Central senatorial district, expressed doubt about the recovery of over N500 billion loan lent to out to both the MSMEs and under household funding during Covid-19 pandemic.

The Managing Director of NIRSAL Microfinance Bank, Abubakar Abdullahi Kure, was at the National Assembly to brief members of the parliament on the workings of the bank.

Speaking during the session, the Chairman Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions, Senator Ayo Akinyelure, said the criteria under which the loans were granted to Nigerians made recovery difficult.

“To me, NISRAL gave out these monies as grant to Nigerians because I don’t see how you are going to collect over N500 billion back from the criteria required for the acquisition of these loans. With these, if there is any recommendation or way forward that the management feels they can enlighten us on, they should put it out, we will go back to the Senate “Since recovering this money will be difficult for NIRSAL because of the time it was disbursed, let’s request that CBN give them fresh fund so they can be able to give it out to persons that they can be able to recover it from. About N180 billion outside is gone, and we can’t wait until it is recovered before another fund can be disbursed.

In countries like the US , they gave their citizens free money over four times. For this agency to meet it’s loaded objectives fresh funds should be released to them,” Senator Ayo Akinyelure suggested.

According to him, NISRAL objective was a good one, adding that it has advantages over other micro finance houses.

Confidence Okwuchi