As part of efforts of the Governor Hyacinth Alia’s administration to empower women in the state to be self-reliant, the Commissioner for Cooperatives and Rural Development in Benue State, Mrs Joy Luga, has said that 27,600 rural women across the state have been slated to benefit from the Bank of Agriculture (BOA) grant and other soft loans.
The Commissioner disclosed this on Monday in Makurdi while speaking to newsmen saying the inclusion of rural women in government plans was in line with the Governor Alia’s Strategic Development Plan and a fulfilment of his message at the 2024 International Women’s Day (IWD).
Luga, who stated that Governor Alia has been pushing to ensure that women receive all the support they need to excel, appreciated the Governor for making funds available to be disbursed to women across the state.
The Commissioner explained that the Ministry has already commenced training of women in various skills including fashion designing, hair, beads making, beauty and cosmetics, soap and detergent making, ICT training among others saying after the training, the women would receive soft loans ranging from N100,000 to N200,000 each.
“At our own level here in the ministry of cooperatives and rural development, we have mapped out modalities on how to empower the women in the society.
“We have trained women in cooperatives and associations to give them soft loans that will lift them from the poor level they are, to at least, a higher level that they can stand and say they are living better than they were before.
“We have trained them in various areas and we are about giving money to them any moment from now.
She said Alia is not relenting, and has ensured that money is available to be disbursed to the women.”
The commissioner however stated that the training and empowerment schemes are not only for women, but also for men who are interested in advancing their socio-economic status.
She however said that the training and empowerment for men would be done at the appropriate time.
“We are not leaving men out because you cannot talk of a woman without a man. We are their backbone. After disbursing these monies to the women, we are training men in the whole state and we will make sure to reach out to them so that when they are celebrating their men’s day, they will have the ministry of rural development at heart and appreciate us,” she added.
The commissioner said the essence of training the women is to ensure that they make proper use of the loans, so as to become more useful to their families and immediate communities.
She added that the ministry would soon roll out it’s programmes in the area of cooperatives for the girl child in the rural areas. “We will be having some training with them to teach them how to care for themselves among others,” she said.
