Bauchi: NGO talks tough over N6.5m debt owed by women groups

From Ahmed Kaigama, Bauchi

Bauchi women groups have defaulted payment of N6.5 million loan benefited from poverty empowerment scheme of an NGO, Women Empowerment Initiative (WEIN),the programme coordinator, of WEIN Mrs. Hajara Phisagih has disclosed.
Speaking during the Annual General Meeting of the organization in Bauchi, she said “A total of ninety seven women groups and twenty individuals are responsible for the debt profile.”
“Efforts to recover the loans granted by the NGO in Ganjuwa, Alkaleri, Bauchi, Tafawa Balewa and Bogoro LGAs had proved abortive as beneficiaries failed to abide by the organization’s repayment agreement,” she said
Mrs. Phisagih stressed that WEIN had put measures in place to recover the loan through the women groups, individual guarantors and husbands of defaulting beneficiaries but warned that “if our organization is pushed to the wall, we may consider taking legal action against defaulters”.
The WEIN Coordinator had earlier enumerated some of the achievements of the NGO to include support to over 5,483 orphans and vulnerable children through the provision of educational and nutritional services funded by USAID.
“Through the support of Palladium International, WEIN has successfully trained two thousand women in the area of local chicken production, and this has helped women to become entrepreneurs”, she added.
Mrs.Phisagih also thanked Northern Education Initiative Plus, WaterAid Nigeria and other donors for promoting the wellbeing of women and the vulnerable groups, assuring that WEIN would ensure the sustainability of these projects in the years to come.
In his remark, the Sarkin Birshin Gandu, Alhaji Sani Gambo decried the poor attitude of beneficiaries to loan repayment and urged community leaders in the local governments concerned to help WEIN to recover the debt for the benefit of other women groups.