EndSARS: Lagos Gov’t supports 1,835 businesses with N940m

To cushion the effect aftermath of last year’s #EndSARS protest where a lot of businesses were destroyed and shops looted by hoodlums, the Lagos State Government says it has supported 1,835 businesses with the sum of N940 million.

This was disclosed on Wednesday by the Commissioner for Wealth Creation and Employment, Mrs Yetunde Arobieke during the 2021 Ministerial Press Briefing in commemoration of the Second Year in the Office of Governor Bababjide Sanwo-Olu.

Arobieke said the ministry set up the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) Recovery Fund to support businesses whose properties and assets were vandalised after the unprecedented #EndSARS protest that rocked the nation in October 2020.

According to her, funding from the state government, corporate organisations and private individuals, businesses were supported with grant sums ranging from N50,000 to N5 million to beneficiaries to help rebuild their businesses.

“With a total of 1,835 beneficiaries and N939.98 million disbursed, 10,005 direct jobs and 40,020 indirect jobs were saved.

“The achievements recorded so far by the ministry have been made possible through the unwavering support of the Governor of Lagos State, Mr Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu, in his pursuits to mitigate unemployment in Lagos state,” the commissioner said.

While the state’s informal sector is largely populated by artisans who are constantly faced with challenges having access to market, inadequate or lack of finance and access to capacity development.

The commissioner said the state governor has approved the creation of a model and robust online portal, a marketplace with a lot of features that make it globally competitive that will provide a ready market for those in the strata of the economy to meet with consumers to transact goods and services on the platform.

According to her, the aim is to expose the artisans to the global market and scale up their potentials and all government certified artisans are currently been onboarded on the app.

She added that a total of 2,000 artisans selected from registered Trade Associations were re-trained in 2020, while the retraining and equipping of another batch of 2,000 artisans would soon commence.

Tradesmen were exposed to entrepreneurial training, book-keeping, ICT, Communication, among other training, which essential in running modern-day businesses.