NERFUND gets new MD

A new Managing Director (MD) has been appointed for the National Economic Reconstruction Fund (NERFUND). He is Dr. Ezekiel Oseni.

The Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Finance, Alh. Mahmoud Isa- Dutse, in a statement issued, in Abuja, yesterday, said that the appointment was with immediate effect.

He said that Dr. Oseni, who, until his appointment, was a General Manager and Chief Risk Officer of the Bank of Industry, was appointed under a Management Agreement between the ministry and the bank.

The Ag MD has a mandate to reposition NERFUND and recover all debts owed it by customers.

The Federal government had shut NERFUND on June 17 over staff protests to draw government attention to their plight and the uncertainty of the organisation’s status, urging the federal government to make a definitive policy statement and recapitalize it.

Established in 1989 with a seed money of N350 million (Deposit Money Banks’ capital requirement then was N15m) NERFUND was a big player as a national Development Finance Institution (DFI), giving loans to Medium and Small enterprises and dominated that sub-sector until 2000 when the then President Olusegun Obasanjo decided to merge organizations doing similar jobs.

 The then Alh. Ahmed Joda committee was empowered to merged poverty alleviation organizations and it recommended the merger of the then Nigerian Industrial Development Bank, National Bank for Commerce and Industry (NBCI) and NERFUND.

 While NBCI, which was already moribund and NIDB merged to form the current Bank of Industry, NERFUND was left because it was the creation of an Act which needed to be repealed if it was to cease to exist.

Before the Obasanjo decision, the NERFUND board had been dissolved in 1993 and the then Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance made Chairman of an Interim management Committee.  That was the beginning of the beginning of trouble for the once most thriving DFI in the country.

The Fund never had a substantive board since then, until June protests.  Successive Permanent Secretaries  of the ministry continued as its IMC Chairman.

Even the Executive Management by until yesterday, consisted of the Managing Director and Executive Director who were on secondment from the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) and the Central bank of Nigeria (CBN).

The request for a substantive Board and Executive Management was one of the key prayers of the staff in their protests.

The Organisation’s annual reports showed that it was running at a profit until 2004 after which the uncertainties surrounding its status began to take heavy tolls on its fortunes.  Even at that it has remained in business, providing micro finance facilities to members of the public with about N7 billion credit in the hands of customers.

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