The President of the Cooperative Federation of Nigeria (CFN), High Chief Tajudeen Oriyomi Ayeola was at the Statehouse in Aso Rock, Abuja, where he led some key personalities from the Cooperative Movement of Nigeria to meet with the Presidency in order to table matters relating to the Cooperative Development and Reforms in Nigeria.
In his speech to the Vice President, High Chief Ayeola noted that the CFN would want the intervention of the Federal Government in reviewing the Nigerian Cooperative Societies Act which has become obsolete in the face of operations of modern cooperatives. He added that such a review would ensure more effective collaboration with FG’s strategy to ensure a larger number of Nigerians benefit from the many intervention schemes of the present Administration such as the Social Housing scheme whose message he said the CFN is already spreading across their 20million members across the country.
The Vice-President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, responding to the CFN President has said cooperatives play a strategic role in implementing the government’s social investment and intervention programmes, by ensuring that many people have access to programmes such as the 300,000-units Social Housing projects.
He stated that working with cooperative groups gives the FG an important part of our strategy in ensuring that the largest number of Nigerians have access to government programmes.
“The partnership of cooperatives with government is possibly the only way of doing so in an efficient manner that ensures that government services and programmes get to the right people.
“Cooperatives give their memberships the leverage to be able to take facilities and make sure those facilities are returned. They also have more knowledge of their individual members,” Prof. Osinbajo noted.
He added that the rationale for cooperatives even in the 1950s remains relevant today, adding that cooperatives in the Western Region and even across the country became important pillars in the economic development of the country.
He said that the FG believes cooperatives would be very useful in all the programmes around the Economic Sustainability Plan, citing that one of them is the Family Homes Funds.
“The case for cooperatives is very well made, and what we must do as a government is looking for ways of cooperating with the Cooperative Associations in ensuring that we are able to get this moving,” he said.
Meanwhile, in the remarks made by the Managing Director of Family Homes Fund (FHF), Femi Adewole, updated the Vice President on the work done so far concerning the National Social Housing Programme., he revealed that “as at year-end 2021, 17,281 homes are at various stages of construction, either completed or in progress across 15 States.”
He added that the agency has mobilized other resources such as N10 billion from the Ministry of Finance, $60million from the African Development Bank, 20million Euros from Agence Française De Développement, and about N20 billion recycled capital from sales of completed property to execute the Social Housing programme for last year.
“For 2022, FHF expects to do 20,640 units using its own resources, but CBN disbursements would avail the opportunity to do even much more than that,” he said.
The Senior Special Assistant to the Vice President on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande, disclosed this in a statement he signed on Tuesday titled ‘How a large number of Nigerians can access government’s programmes – Osinbajo’.
