President Bola Tinubu’s administration has approved a $3.45 billion loan application to purchase five items.
This decision was made during a meeting of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) on Monday, October 23.
The projects for which loan is being sought include the power industry, renewable energy, state resource mobilization, teenage girls’ initiative for learning and development, and a women’s empowerment project.
Wale Edun, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, informed journalists that Tinubu’s government will accept the $3.5 billion “zero-interest” loan with a 10-year moratorium, meaning payments would resume in 2033.
“Today at the Federal Executive Council, I presented five memos which were gracefully approved by the Council. They had to do with concessional and, in many cases, zero-interest financing by the World Bank and the International Development Association, which is the very concessional financing arm,” Edun said.
“The projects that were approved for funding were in the power sector and then the renewable energy sector. There was funding for states for resource mobilisation programmes to help them with the internally generated revenue efforts.
“There was a project for adolescent girls’ initiative for learning and empowerment. And then finally the fifth financing that was approved was for Women project.”
Edun noted that the $700 million girls’ initiative would help young girls in secondary school develop marketable talents in addition to their scholastic achievements.
Costing the project, Edun said, “$700m is the size of the current project. So those were five loans totalling $3.45bn. And as you know, the tenure is all around 40 years, with a moratorium period of around 10 years and interest very low, or in the cases of either loans, zero interest. However, some fees would be incurred.”
Dr Tahir Mamman, Minister of Education, went on to say that the girls’ initiative, which began in seven states initially, has now been expanded to 11 states.
Mamman said, “Initially, from seven participating states, we will now have about 11 additional states participating in this project, which will lead to the empowerment of girls between 10 to 20 right across the participating states.
“This is a very major escalation of this programme that is meant to empower our girls, our teachers and the provision for additional schools in the country.”
He went on to say that the programs were in keeping with the Tinubu administration’s goal of reducing, “if not eliminated altogether,” the number of out-of-school girls and children in general.
