Olaolu Olusina
19 August 2008
Lagos — Stakeholders in the microfinance sector in Nigeria have a unique opportunity to tap into the secrets of success of the 2006 Nobel Laureate and 'Banker to the Poor', Professor Mohammad Yunus.
The US-trained Bangladeshi economist and founder of the Grameen Bank is expected to share secrets of the success of his micro-credit model that has been replicated in over 100 countries with stakeholders in Nigeria at a microfinancing conference on Saturday, August 23 in Lagos.
Organised by Tradewise Speaker Bureau and Consulting Limited, the event is expected to draw participants from stakeholders in the microfinance sector.
The conference is coming at a time efforts are being geared at promoting the microfinance sector as a way of assisting the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the country. This is due to the realisation that SMEs are considered as the engine of growth for industries all over the world and thrive mainly on micro-credit.
Managing Director, Tradewise Consulting, Mr. Dayo Omotayo, is upbeat about the event which has been endorsed by the Lagos State Government, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Microfinance banks and other banks, among others.
"The conference is for the benefit of the microfinance industry and those who have developed policy framework for the sector," he told THISDAY. "The idea is to bring stakeholders together to share their experiences and learn how they surmounted their challenges if any."
According to Omotayo, the choice of the 2006 Nobel laureate (Yunus) as main speaker is also deliberate. "Yunus implemented a model that became a success. We want to learn from someone who has tried and tested a model," he said.
The conference, according to Omotayo, is about empowerment for the local and small entrepreneurs as it will also take into consideration the peculiarity of the Nigerian environment.
"It's not just a function. Professor Yunus is the highlight, but we hope to take real issues. We hope to be able, by converging, to move the industry forward and I know certainly that those who come will learn and be better off for coming," Omotayo said.
According to him, "When he (Yunus) comes and shares his experience, we'll be able to take the ones we can implement in Nigeria. There is nothing we can do with a foreign model that will not take Nigeria as a country into consideration; the nature of our people, the way we do business here, our history and experience with community banks."
Professor Yunus's simple model has the objective of helping the poor escape grinding poverty by offering them loan on very liberal conditions, without collateral, and teaching them the basics of financial principles.
The experiment which started in the mid-1970s through small loans to a group of 42 indigent Bangladeshi women later metamorphosed into the Grameen Bank in 1983.
Based on Yunus's conviction that credit is a fundamental human right, the bank operates a trust-based model of giving loans without collateral and has a 99 percent repayment rate. It is believed that stakeholders in Nigeria will learn a lot from this experience.
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