Idara Jerome, Uyo
About 73,800 women across Akwa Ibom’s 369 wards are targeted to receive ₦100,000 each under a state-backed cooperative scheme designed to give grassroots women access to finance without relying on informal lenders.
The Special Adviser to the Governor on Bureau of Cooperatives and Rural Development, Mrs Alice Ekpenyong, disclosed this on Monday while outlining the bureau’s activities, explaining that each of the 369 ward cooperatives is to receive ₦20 million, with 200 women benefiting from each cooperative.
The intervention translates to about ₦7.36 billion in direct support and is built around the formation of registered women cooperatives rather than distributing funds to individuals outside an organised structure.
Ekpenyong said the beneficiaries were expected to emerge through meetings at ward level, with units within each ward represented before names were submitted. “We did not form the names for them. They sat together to form the names of the cooperative,” she said.
She explained that the registration process requires beneficiaries’ signatures, telephone numbers, bank account details, BVN and NIN, providing a mechanism for identifying participants and reducing impersonation or manipulation.
The bureau is also using digital screening to prevent people who have previously benefited from government empowerment programmes from receiving the same intervention again. Ekpenyong said the system would flag a NIN already linked to another beneficiary.
For beneficiaries, however, registration is only the beginning. Ekpenyong said the bureau would train the cooperatives, monitor their businesses, attend their meetings through field officers and audit their accounts to ensure that the money is used for productive activities.
“We try to preach to the women: don’t take government money and go and start buying powder. Invest it so that tomorrow, you’ll be able to assist your husband, assist your children, and assist your family,” she said.
The cooperative programme is also being extended to fishermen, with the bureau registering 140 fishermen cooperative societies for the next phase of empowerment after about 50 cooperatives previously received grants and fishing equipment.
Ekpenyong said the fishermen were being organised into cooperatives across the 14 riverine local government areas, with the arrangement intended to reduce their dependence on private financiers who advance money and subsequently claim their catches.
“Before, you know that the Igbo people will come in, pay a large amount of money to these people,” she said, explaining that government support was intended to give fishermen the equipment and capacity to operate without depending on such arrangements.
The bureau said storage infrastructure being developed at Oron would further help fishermen by allowing them to preserve fish and crayfish instead of being forced to sell immediately after returning from fishing. Umanah said cooling, storage and drying facilities were being provided to address the problem.
Beyond the current empowerment schemes, Ekpenyong said the state had 31,607 registered cooperative societies, following the registration of 607 new societies in 2025, although she noted that many of the older cooperatives were inactive. More than 1,760 societies were audited between May and December 2025 as part of efforts to improve accountability.
She said the bureau was therefore moving toward a more structured cooperative system through its planned Akwa Ibom State Cooperative Transformation Strategy 2025–2030, while digital registration and unique identification are being introduced to determine which societies are genuinely active and capable of benefiting from government interventions.
Commissioner for Information, Aniekan Umanah, explained that the digital process uses a de-duplication screening system developed by the Ministry of Digital Economy. “Once a BVN or VIN number or anything enters there, if you have come in twice, it force out,” he said.
