30th August, 2016
The Federal Government has expressed its determination to replicate the Rural Institution Building Programme across the country.
Mr Appeh Auta, Senior Adviser on International Donor Partners to Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development disclosed this in Abuja on Tuesday.
Auta, however, said he was highly impressed with the successes of the seven-year pilot programme introduced in 2010 to reduce poverty in rural areas.
RUFIN is a programme sponsored by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in collaboration with the Federal Government.
The programme gives special attention to women, the physically challenged and rural youths through group formation methodology.
However, the programme was being implemented in the 12 states of Katsina, Zamfara, Adamawa, Bauchi, Benue, Nasarawa, Lagos, Oyo, Akwa Ibom, Edo, Anambra and Imo.
Auta said that though the pilot programme was expected to end in 2017, government was putting plans in place to replicate the programme across the country.
“RUFIN is a pilot programme and the funding stops in 2017, however, we are looking at how we can replicate the programme in all the local government areas in the 36 states.
“The real spirit and the education of RUFIN itself live on; it is not a financial system where we give out money to people.
“It is a programme that educates and builds the capacity of financial institutions and accredited groups in the rural community to be able to access credit.
“The programme has done this very successfully and people in Benue, Lagos, Adamawa and other areas are singing its praises,” he said.
Speaking on the performance of the programme, Auta said he was highly impressed and moved by the results and testimonies he had seen and heard in the fields.
According to him, RUFIN does not only solve issues of financial accessibility to the rural poor society, it also helps to mitigate the myth of urban mobility.