The frustration of a young Nigerian on government’s opaque policy

This letter was written by a young potential Nigerian enterprenuer to a member of the editorial board of a leading newspaper.

The young man, Musa Sule Damagum, expressed his frustration over government’s inability to fulfill promises made to them.

The letter is reproduced below:

“Early this year, I applied for the federal government Youths Entrepreneurship Scheme (YES) programme under the Bank of industry along with 75,000 other Nigerians in which we submitted business ideas. At the end of the first process, about 3000 applicants were selected and I was one of them. The initial advertisement was that the FG was going to finance the best business ideas through a loan of N5 million to be disbursed by BOI. The conditions were that apart from being a Nigerian, one has to be ready to deposit his/her certificate with the BOI as collateral.

“So immediately after the selection, we were enrolled into an online business training conducted by a Kenyan firm, Africa Management Initiative. That intensive training required many of us in the northeast to relocate to bigger cities where we could access the internet since Boko Haram has vandalized communication facilities in many of our towns. During the online training, we took over 20 courses, wrote exams and submitted assignments for each. Then after the online training, we were again called to attend in-class training for five days in our state capitals. In all these, we had to take care of our transportation and accommodation expenses. The explanation initially was that after the training, we were just going to apply for the loan and deposit our certificates.

“However, the BOI staff at the training began to bring up different stringent conditions to accessing the loan. Every business idea you have, regardless of what you submitted during your first application, must be about producing something e.g bread, milk, oil etc. You must bring a guarantor who must have a net worth equal to the amount you are asking for. You must have a business structure in which you are already producing something and attach account statement to show your cash flow. And BOI has to visit and assess this business structure before it approves your application. You have to take care of your pre-operating expenses like business registration, rent, logo design as well as registration with regulatory bodies like NAFDAC and SON.

“Finally, even after meeting all the above conditions, BOI will not give you the money in cash. They can only give you your working capital while they will buy the equipment you need. So you have to find suppliers of the kind of equipment you need and ask them to give you quotation and then you send to BOI.

“Given the following stringent conditions, it has become very difficult, if not impossible, for those of us from the North, and perhaps many people also from the south, to access the loan. I know for a fact that of the 24 of us who were successful from Yobe State, none has met the conditions yet. Also, of the 50 that participated in the first badge from Kano State, none got the loan after being subjected to a rigorous process yet we have brilliant ideas and are confident our ideas are bankable. The challenge is in meeting the BOI requirements. We therefore want you to intervene on this issue. I am sure if you do, someone will take notice and do something.”

The editor’s response:

In a country where many unscrupulous people walk in and out of banks to collect billions of Naira without collateral, it is rather unfortunate that needless impediments are being put on the way of enterprising young men and women who are seeking to create wealth and possibly become employers of labour. I therefore hope that the authorities at the BOI will look into this issue; otherwise, we would be forced to dismiss their YES programme as no better than another 419!

However, we can easily locate the problem in the manner President Muhammadu Buhari is running his administration. With no substantive chief executive and without a board, there is little the BOI can do and that tells the story of many of the critical public institutions where there are no new initiatives or fresh ideas because the president cannot constitute their statutory boards more than a year and a half after assuming office.