The Honourable Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development Sadiya Umar Farouq has commenced the training of Master Trainers for Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme GEEP, in Abuja.
According to the Minister,” The two-day training course intends to train the master trainers and to provide an understanding and insight to the processes, drivers, threats and opportunities associated with the core GEEP activities”.
“The training is expected to educate the Master trainers about the newly introduced structure of top-bottom representation from the Federal through State and Local Government levels respectively, as well as inform them on the roles and responsibilities of the COMO’s on how to register and enlighten the target beneficiaries on how to access the GEEP loans in furtherance to help eradicate poverty, generate employment throughout the Federal Republic of Nigeria”.
The Minister said that, “FMHADMSD entered partnership with this agency to appoint the Community Orientation and Mobilization officers (COMO’s) as the – “GEEP Local Government Desk Officers” at all the 774 local government levels areas across the 36 states and the FCT. The role of the desk officers will be to:
a) Sensitize communities on the GEEP programme
b) Register interested beneficiaries of TraderMoni, MarketMoni and FarmerMoni
c) Collect and collate necessary data for the programme
d) Provide necessary feedback to the programme coordinators at State and Federal Levels
e) Encourage active participation of the programme
f) Uphold the mandate of the programme and lead with honesty, fairness under conditions of oath”.
She explained that,”The National Social Investment Programme is an initiative that is designed to give collateral and interest free credits to poor and vulnerable people identified at the bottom of the economic pyramid including persons with disability.
She said, “it is the ministry’s great pleasure to formally announce a collaborative partnership with the National Orientation Agency as one of the partners in implementation of the NSIP programmes since inception. In its bid to consistently raise awareness to positively change attitudes, values, and behaviors”.
Earlier, the Permanent Secretary Bashir Nura Alkali represented by Director Human Resources Department, Babatunde Jaji, in his overview said the objective of the Government Enterprise Empowerment Programme is to develop skills that will strengthen the newly existing structure for successful implementation.
“FMHADMSD will represent the federal level, the office of the focal person will represent the State Government and Community Orientation and Mobilization Officers will represent the GEEP Local Government desk Officer in order to create a value chain of supervision, institutionalisation, coordination and facilitate the successful implementation of the programme.
He added that the Honourable Minister will open the first part of the training of the Master trainers represented from the 36 states of the Federation. While the second part of the training will be a step down training where the master trainers NOA Staff are in turn expected to train the COMO’S in their respective states on the roles as GEEP Desk Officers.
The Director General of the National Orientation Agency Garuba Abari urged the Master trainers to listen carefully and ask questions on the grey areas in order to avoid any hitch in implementing the program in the grassroot.
Grace Osuji
Principal Information Officer
For: DD (Information)
