Our Reporter, Abuja
Presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 elections, Peter Obi, has raised doubts over the Development Bank of Nigeria’s (DBN) claim that it has disbursed more than ₦1 trillion to Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) across the country since 2015.
In a statement on Wednesday, Obi said his independent checks and interactions with small business owners across Nigeria revealed that most were unaware of the bank’s existence, let alone its reported disbursements. According to him, over 80 percent of entrepreneurs he encountered had no knowledge of the DBN.
“If indeed such an amount was deployed to support enterprises, the results should be evident,” Obi said.
“For instance, if $1 billion were disbursed in small loans averaging about $1,000 each, it could have supported at least one million small businesses, creating no fewer than three million jobs, with visible growth in enterprises and measurable progress in poverty reduction.”
He argued that Nigeria’s present economic realities do not reflect such large-scale interventions.
“Unemployment remains at a record high, businesses are struggling to survive rather than thriving, many enterprises are shutting down or relocating outside Nigeria, and poverty is deepening instead of reducing,” Obi observed.
The former Anambra State governor questioned the whereabouts of the funds, asking: “If ₦1 trillion truly left the coffers of DBN to empower Nigerians, where did the money go? Who exactly were the beneficiaries? What tangible businesses were created? Where is the proof of jobs generated or poverty reduced?”
Obi insisted that empowerment programmes must be judged by their results, not by official claims or statistics. He described the bank’s figures as potentially “another round of grand deception, where scarce national resources are captured by a few elites and recycled under the guise of empowerment schemes.”
Calling for transparency and accountability, Obi said Nigerians deserve verifiable evidence that such vast sums are being invested in their lives and future.
