Governor Babagana Umara Zulum of Borno State on Saturday in Gamboru supervised the disbursement of N343 million and varieties of food to aid part of economic and humanitarian intervention to residents of the border community in Ngala Local Government Area.
Gamboru shares border with Cameroon through which Chad and Central Africa are reached by road.
The N343 million is made up of N150 million distributed as soft loan and grants to small and medium scale traders, and N193 million disbursed to 48,700 vulnerable residents.
Zulum arrived Gamboru on Friday after passing two nights in Dikwa.
And on Saturday, he flagged off the disbursement of N150 milliom to traders.
Zulum personally took time to verify the list of beneficiaries, explaining that his action was to ensure only deserving persons were allotted the loans, in the aim to stimulate the local economy.
Nineteen traders received N1 million, 25 traders received N500,000 each, other categories received N250,000, N100,000 and N30,000 each, depending on sizes of their businesses, the jobs they create and capacity to off-set loans.
The Governor explained that the loan/grant, with refundable period of four years, was meant to resuscitate businesses and livelihoods destroyed by the Boko Haram insurgents in communities of Gwoza.
As he explained in Biu and Gwoza, where similar disbursements were made weeks back, Zulum emphasised in Gamboru that any beneficiary that is able to repay 50 per cent his or her loans within record time will enjoy waiver of the balance of 50 per cent, while those who deliberately fail to repay within the dateline will be made to repay 100 per cent of what they received as loans and grants.
Aside disbursing N150 million to traders, Governor Zulum, still in Gamboru, disbursed N193 million to vulnerable residents from different communities of Ngala LGA.
Combined total of 48,700 residents received cash and variety of food items during the Governor’s humanitarian trip.
Thirty thousand female residents received N5,000 cash and a wrapper each, another 4,372 male residents received N10,000 cash each, while 14,328 male residents each received a bag of rice, maize and beans.
Lawan abubakar