To spur even development, alleviate poverty and achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), policy makers must support cooperatives in Nigeria through the provision of adequate funding and an enabling environment.
The Founder/CEO of Cooperative Rating and Award Society of Nigeria (CRASON), Mr. Victor Ayegoke, said putting in place the right regulatory system and policy for cooperatives to thrive will position Nigeria to benefit from her cooperative economy estimated at N500 billion.
Ayegoke, who spoke on the sideline of the maiden edition of the Nigerian National Cooperative Awards in Lagos, said it was important to review the Cooperative Act of 1993, which is outdated and was last reviewed in 2014.
CRASON is an organisation that monitors and tracks the performance and socio-economic impacts of cooperatives across the country. It organised the award in collaboration with the Department of Cooperatives, under the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
The objective of the award was to celebrate the cooperative leadership, project good governance and enterprises as well as promote cooperatives at large. “The award marks the ground finale of what CRASON has been doing in the past one year. We want to project and recognise what cooperatives,” Ayegoke said.
The CEO said based on one of CRASON’s projects tagged “Coopcount,” which collated and analysed the activities of cooperatives in the last one year, it gathered that there are more than 19 million individual cooperative members in the country, and the 19 million people are providing jobs for no fewer than 100, 000 Nigerians.
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