Billions of foreign aid gotten in the name of women and children are not being used for the intended purposes.’’
By Deborah Hassan
365Daily – The Minister of Women Affairs, Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye, has declared that the act of collecting loans, aids and grants from international donor organisations without intention to use them for their development must be put to an end.
She stated this while speaking to journalists recently in Abuja.
The minister stated that to achieve this, the process of receiving loans must be restructured to ensure that the requests involve programmes that will empower women and children across the country, rather than ‘’technical support and advocacy’’ which is the common practice currently.
Kennedy-Ohanenye also informed that President Bola Tinubu has endorsed the restructuring process to ‘’ensure that money needed for women and children go directly to them and not into the pockets of ‘’consultants’’ who claim to use them for consultancy and other unrelated purposes.
She lamented that ‘’billions of foreign aid gotten in the name of women and children are not being used for the intended purposes,’’ adding that, ‘’if all Nigerians support the project, in six months, the result will be obvious.’’
The minister said as part of the president’s commitment to uplift Nigerian women and children, he would today, March 7, 2024, unveil “PBAT cares for Nigerian women,” a programme targeted at empowering them.
According to her, the programme will enable the president, through her ministry, to meet his obligation to the people.
Kennedy-Ohanenye added that “Integrity Brigade”, comprising volunteers who would track the movement of monies gotten through aids, loans or donations for development of women and children, would monitor for proper usage of the funds.
“The Integrity Brigade will inform Nigerians what is going on. If the money is meant for A, the Integrity Brigade will ensure that it is pushed to A. If it is not pushed to A, the Integrity Brigade will inform Nigerians what is going on,” she explained.