Jaafar Jaafar
8 August 2008
Kano — The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Professor Chukwuma Soludo, yesterday said wide spread presence of micro-finance institutions in the North would reduce the poverty level in the region.
Soludo reiterated that studies showed that the highest poverty level in the country is in the north, saying if northern governments would encourage operations of micro-finance institutions, the level of poverty would reduce to the barest minimum.
"If we look at the terrain that the Nigerian economy is, you will realize that poverty is obviously still the number one national challenge, and if the data of a survey conducted in 2004 is to be disaggregated state-by-state, you will come to the reality that between the 70's and 90's, largest chunk of the poverty appeared to be in the north," the CBN governor said.
Soludu, who spoke at the official launch of the Entrepreneurship Development Centre (EDC) yesterday in Kano, stated that to tackle this high level of poverty in the region, the issue of skills comes to the fore, which, according to him, happens to be the key to the whole issue of lifting people out of poverty.
The CBN governor, explained that part of the focus of the new micro finance policy and regulatory framework is to see the best ways that can link skills to finance, saying entrepre-neurial skills need to be mainstreamed so that every body is not left behind.
He said people hitherto obtained finance but lacked the skills to manage them, just as people also set up micro finance banks or community banks without requisite skills to operate them, noting that this was the reason many of these financial institutions collapsed.
While drawing analogy between the north and the south in terms of access to micro finance infrastructure, Professor Soludo further revealed that in one state in the south east, over 80 micro banks operate, while only six operate in Kano despite its population and economic potentials.
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