Transparency International Nigeria has said the TraderMoni scheme, a collateral-free loan initiative targeted at petty traders and artisans as part of the National Social Investment Programme of the Federal Government, is a form of voter inducement.
The chairman of the anti-corruption organisation, Awwal Rafsanjani, noted that the initiative was an official use of public funds in the name of TraderMoni to actually induce voters.
Rafsanjani noted that the TraderMoni scheme was not a program that was “part and parcel of the manifesto of the ruling party and it is not in Nigerian constitution.”
The Federal Government had argued that the TraderMoni was an empowerment initiative designed to meet the financing need of at least two million petty traders across the country.
But Rafsanjani said if the government had TraderMoni as a policy plan, it should have begun its implementation earlier than a few weeks to the elections. According to the TNI chairman, mixing election campaigns with “distribution of money” is ill-advised.
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