Impact of Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) on poverty status of beneficiaries in Cross River State, Nigeria

In line with the sustainable development goal to end poverty in all forms, the Nigerian Government launched Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) - as a social investment programme to alleviate poverty by providing credit to petty traders to support entrepreneurship. This study assesses the impact of Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) on the poverty status of beneficiaries in Cross River State, Nigeria. Specifically, it compared the mean income before, and after accessing the loan, analysed the determinants of poverty status of the respondents in the study area, enumerated the benefits of GEEP to the respondents, and identified the challenges faced by the beneficiaries in accessing the loan. Stratified random sampling technique was used to select 398 respondents who had benefitted from the programme across the eleven Local Government Areas (LGAs) that the programme covered. Data were obtained from primary source with the aid of a well-structured questionnaire, and analyzed using; frequency count, mean, Foster Greer and Thorbecke (FGT) model, paired T- test (Z), and logistic regression analysis. The results showed that, majority of the respondents were male (55.6%) with a mean age of 35 years, and had an average household size of 5 persons. The study also showed that 98.9% of the respondents were educated. The mean monthly income before GEEP support was N 44,535.53, while after GEEP it was N54180.20. Thirty-six percent of the total respondents were poor (36%). The comparative analysis of the mean income before and after accessing the loan showed that, there was a significant difference between their mean incomes at 5% level of significance. Key variables that determined poverty status were; household size and loan amount. The main benefits of GEEP to the respondents were; increase in beneficiaries’ income, and improvement in their standard of living. The major challenges faced by the respondents were; lack of appropriate means to repay loan, stressful loan procedure, and difficulty in transferring money from mobile wallet to bank. The study recommended that the loan application process should be less complex to enable quick loan application. The GEEP programme should be sustained, and allowed to have wider coverage in both rural and urban areas of the country as it has assisted a lot of small business owners’ access to cheap credit. Key words: Impact, GEEP, empowerment programme, government enterprise, poverty status