PRESS RELEASE: ABIA SOCIAL INVESTMENT OFFICE

1. School Feeding Programme
The Abia State School feeding programme today got a boost of 176 million Naira for the month of January 2018 for her over 1600 cooks engaged for the purpose of providing one decent square meal daily to pupils of public primary school. It will be recalled that the wife of the Governor of Abia State Deaconess Nkechi Ikpeazu had in July 2015 lunched a free school meal programme to provide decent balanced meal to pupils of public primary schools across the state in partnership with stakeholders. As the programme progressed, the Abia State Free School meal programme entered into agreement with the federal government through an MoU to partner with the federal government home grown school feeding programme in order to expand the initiative to over 180,000 pupils of the 859 primary schools across the state. Following a clean bill of health after a thorough scrutiny by the team from the office of the Vice President in charge of the federal government programme, Abia state has since benefitted from this partnership. Today’s disbursement showed an increase due largely to increase in school enrollment and a correspondent increase in the number of hitherto unemployed rural women now engaged through this programme as cooks. As was earlier disclosed by the Focal Person for Social Investment Mr Chinenye Nwaogu, the programme will rob off positively on several sectors including agriculture, trade and commerce, health, education etc. The direct disbursement of 176 million Naira monthly will boost the programme, he assured. The Focal Person thanked the Governor Okezie Ikpeazu PHD for his untiring efforts to leverage on all available structures and supports to improve the live of Abians. He stated that the wife of the Governor Mrs Ikpeazu has demonstrated through this programme her deep love for Abians especially the vulnerable children and women who are direct beneficiaries of the programme. He further urged the cooks to ensure judicious utilization of the funds and called on all Abians to monitor the programme in their various communities. He informed pressmen that the State programme office has set up a very stringent monitoring and evaluation mechanism to ensure that the programme’s goals are fully realized. He expressed satisfaction that the programme has already achieved obvious results going by the number of persons so far affected positively by the initiative.
2. GEEP/MARKET MONI LOAN SCHEME
In another vein, Chinenye Nwaogu the Abia State Focal Person has announced that 5,180 Abians who applied for the GEEP/ Market Moni loan of 50,000 were successful and have already started receiving funds through their bank accounts. He stated this today while briefing news men on the activities of the Abia State Social Investment Office. He stated that the disbursement was part of the Abia State/ BOI 3 Billion Naira facility lunched in September 2017 by the Governor Okezie Ikpeazu which is targeting about 30,000 Abians. Mr Nwaogu said that Governor Okezie Ikpeazu is poised to support MSMEs in the state through improved access to finance which is one of the bane of MSME growth in Nigeria. He congratulated all those who were successful in this batch and urged them to remember the charge of Governor Ikpeazu during the launch for them to utilize the money to grow their business to improve the socioeconomic Indices in the state, create more jobs and improve the state’s IGR. He assured those yet to benefit that the State Social Investment Office is working tirelessly to expand the programme to all interested business men and women in state as a way of supporting Governor Ikpeazu’s drive to strengthen MSME in the state. He said that the next batch will be more going by the increased interest of Abians in the scheme.
Mr Nwaogu assured Abians that the Abia State Social Investment Office will continue to ensure that all opportunities accruable to the state and her citizens will be sourced for the benefit of Abians. He further expressed deep gratitude to the Governor Okezie Ikpeazu and his amiable wife for their determination to improve the lives of Abians especially the vulnerable groups. He stated that under Governor Okezie Ikpeazu more than one million Abians have benefitted from one empowerment initiative or the other and called on all Abians to continue to support the Governor for more dividends of democracy. He further stated that these programmes and other developmental strides of the Governor has endeared him to majority of Abians who are poised to reelect him come 2019 whenever he declares his intention to run again.
Chinenye Nwaogu
State Focal Person,
Social Investment