NFWP IN OGUN STATE, FADAIRO SHED MORE LIGHTS

The State Project Coordinator NFWP Ogun State Mrs. Bolanle Fadairo reflected back to the memory lane of how the project was conceived from a review of Women economic situations at the 2017 regular council meeting on Women Affairs held at Sokoto, where critical factors militating against women were sited, among which lack of access to business finances and financial education was noted.

The outcome of the council resolutions resulted in the Baseline survey on women economic situation, and this later gave birth to the Local Governments Assessments of Women Development Centers in 2018.

Consequent upon the results and recommendations for improving the lots of women, the Nigeria For Women Project was conceived by the Federal Government of Nigeria with Project Development Objective to ‘improve the livelihoods of women in targeted areas of Nigeria” among which Ogun State was considered to represent the South West with Odeda, Yewa North and Ijebu North East  as the pilot beneficiary LGAs with the of 18,000 women each; totaling 54,000 women whose livelihoods are expected to improve by end of year 2023.

It is worthy to reiterate that NFWP is unique in its implementation policy, strategies and methodology with Series of training and retraining of its entire project Staff at all levels and beneficiaries on the Project Appraisal Document (PAD), Project Implementation Manual (PIM) and Community Operating Manual

The full implementation of NFWP commenced in December, 2020 and as we speak, Ogun SPCU have successfully engaged 233 Ward Facilitators, encouraged Women to form themselves into WAG through community sensitization and mobilization. Ogun state has been enrolled 1,108 Women Affinity Groups in the three LGAs. Ogun is the first state to meet up with the target recommended by the Bank and was equally commended for this and recognized as the project first mover state in Nigeria while Bank accolade was equally received. 

It is no gain saying that Ogun WAGs have supported themselves with their own personal saving worth more than 100Million Naira through savings and loans with the use of VSLA methodology by maintaining the 7 key principles of the project.

The project has made an indelible impact in the life's of the women in Ogun state as they have enjoyed different capacity building activities that has expanded their horizons and better equipped to make decisive decision that improve their livelihood