BEVERLY HILLS, CA, December 01, (THEWILL) – Apparently determined to reduce the poverty level among residents of Borno State following four years of Boko Haram insurgency, the Dangote Foundation, a corporate social responsibility (CSR) outfit of Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, on Sunday splashed the sum of N540million on 54,000 indigent residents of the state at the rate of N10,000 per person.
The donation and distribution of the money was done in partnership with Support for Women, Orphans and Tsangaya (SWOT), a pet project of the wife of Borno State governor, Hajiya Nana Kashim Shettima.
According to the arrangement, SWOT is to organise the indigents in the state and get the financial support to them.
Managing Director of the Dangote Foundation, Dr. Adhiambo Odaga, said the Foundation had earmarked N540m for distribution to targeted beneficiaries in the 27 Local Government Areas of Borno State as part of a special disbursement of N1, 195,000,000 (N1.2 billion) meant for Adamawa, Borno and Yobe States that are under state of emergency.
Speaking at the ceremony to distribute the grants at the Borno State Government House in Maiduguri, Odaga disclosed that 177,500 women and 19,000 youths in Kano, Kogi, Adamawa and Yobe States have also benefitted from the programme.
She stressed that the micro-grants are part of a national programme instituted by the Dangote Group to provide cash transfers to at least 1,000 poor and vulnerable Nigerians in each of the 774 Local Government Areas of the federation.
“Dangote Foundation’s micro-grants enable recipients to grow or start an enterprise, invest in productive assets, improve the health of their families and or take on new activities that will reduce their vulnerability and enhance the economic standing of their household and communities,” she said.
Governor Sherrif Shettima, who monitored the event with his wife , described Dangote as a patriotic Nigerian and expressed gratitude to him for giving special attention to states like Borno that have peculiar security, social and economic challenges.
His wife said most of the beneficiaries are women who lost their husbands to the Boko Haram insurgency as well as orphans, blind, the cripple and other vulnerable members of the society.
