Stop Using Cooperative Societies to Defraud Members, Niger Govt Warns

Laleye Dipo in Minna
The Niger State Government has said it discovered that some managers of cooperative societies are using the organisations to defraud innocent members.

It therefore warned that a stop should be put to the ‘illegal’ activities, saying machineries have been put in place to arrest and prosecute culprits.
The state Head of Service, Alhaji Yabagi Sule, made this known in Minna on Monday while addressing the opening of the Strategic Planning for stakeholders’ meeting of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) social security scheme called ENDWELL.

“The state government has vowed that it would deal with organisations and cooperative societies that are siphoning the people’s money”
The HoS who lamented that a lot of people in the state had lost their money through fraudulent organisations and cooperative societies stated that the state government would no longer “condone a situation where these schemes are formed and used as conduit pipes to siphon people’s money.”

He charged cooperative societies to implement strategic plans in order to conduct an assessment to analyse social issues and seek stakeholders view on salient issues.

Sule also appealed to the societies to come up with new ideas that would promote the welfare of their members and promote government effort.

The HoS commended the NUT ENDWELL Scheme for “seeking deliberate shift from the social welfare thinking to coordinated actions designed to protect the contributors from economic and social deprivation arising from retirement from formal jobs and sudden health challenges.”

The state Chairman of the NUT, Alhaji Ibrahim Umar, said the strategic plan workshop was meant to chart a new path for the organisation and transform the NUT ENDWELL scheme towards securing the social economic well-being of its members before and after retirement.