David-Chyddy Eleke in Awka
Wife of the Governor of Anambra State, Dr. Nonye Soludo, has warned beneficiaries of empowerment equipment distributed to citizens of the state to avoid selling them off, but to put them to good use that could help them escape poverty.
Mrs. Soludo who addressed the beneficiaries at the Anambra State Government House shortly before the commencement of the distribution of empowerment materials to 5,000 persons drawn from the 326 political wards of the state, said selling them is the shortest route to remaining eternally poor.
She said the beneficiaries were carefully selected to ensuring that they met the criteria of people needing to be empowered as a way of helping poor people beat poverty and sustain families.
Addressing them, she said “What we are doing here is massive empowerment and the equipment you see here are of good quality. It is intentional, so that when you use it for your business it will perform optimally and you will not run into problem with your business. We made sure the quality is top notch.
“I want to urge you not to sell your own. What we are doing is to empower you and help your family, help Anambra and Nigeria at large. We are hoping that the 5,000 people we are empowering today will train more peoples when they start making money.
“I want to warn you strongly not to sell your equipment when you receive it. If you sell it and eat the money, it will finish and you will return to square one. We want you to use it credibly and scale your business with it. We will monitor you to ensure you use it for the purpose intended, and we will support those who are doing well and need to scale their businesses to the next level and we pray that your businesses will do well.
“All of you here were selected from the 326 wards we have in Anambra State. I want you people in your various localities to form groups so that we can keep track. I don’t just give out empowerment, I monitor how well people perform in business after they have been empowered, that will form the decision of the next empowerment,” she stated.
The empowerment materials included industrial sewing machines, make up toolkits, deep freezers, piglets, goats, grinding machines, grilling equipment, baking ovens and many others.
She stated that the committee in charge of the empowerment had to turn down some persons suspected to be well to do, who were smuggled into the list, insisting that the empowerment was only for persons who truly need them.