The national coordinator of the National Association of Co-operative Consultants (NACC), Akintola Ademola, says the socio-economic challenges in the country could escalate if efforts are not made to revamp the cooperative sector of the economy.
Ademola adds that the socio-economic challenges, which include high degree of poverty, alarming increasing rate of unemployment, poor standard of living are threatening the economy of the country.
Addressing journalists on the South-West Cooperative Assessment Summit/Exhibition slated for Ibadan, he notes that over the years, cooperative societies had played prominent and pivotal roles in
reducing these socio-economic challenges in the advanced countries.
“Developed nations of the world, through co-operatives empower their people, create jobs, improve standard of living in their task to tackle poverty.
“Empirical studies of the economy of the nations of the world show that micro, small and medium scale enterprises create over 70 percent jobs. Invariably, co-operatives are the power that fuel the
enterprises,” he says.
While calling on the Federal Government to create enabling policy that would make cooperative strive, he says it was capable of reducing poverty and unemployment rate in the country, faulting the Federal Government’s Integrated Payroll Payment Systems, saying it has destroyed cooperative societies in
the country.
The NACC coordinator discloses that most of the affected workers have not been able to repay the loans collected from their cooperative societies.
According to him, since the workers received their salaries directly from Abuja, they failed to adhere strictly with the undertakings they had with their respective societies.
The situation, he points out, became worse when after receiving their salaries, they refused to refund loans obtained from the societies.
He says the focus of the summit, which would be attended by delegates from Oyo, Lagos, Osun, Ogun, Ekiti, Ondo and Kwara states, is to address the socio-economic challenges causing a major setback to nation’s economic development.
Remi Feyisipo
