Baraza To Eradicate Poverty In Bayelsa State By 2030

Baraza Multipurpose Cooperative Society Limited has disclosed its plan to eradicate poverty and make over 2.7 million people of Bayelsa State live a meaningful life by 2030, in line with the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. 

Baraza Managing Director, Arc. Dr. Miebi Bribena, who disclosed this while featuring as a panelist at 2021 Africa SME Roundtable (Hybrid Edition) on Monday in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State capital, said the Cooperative Society, through its online FOREX trade and other programmes, including those that would soon be introduced such as Cooperative dredgers, Cooperative Modular refinery, and Cooperative Real Estate, etc. that fall under the purview of Cooperative bylaws are geared towards total eradication of poverty. 

Arc. Dr. Bribena informed that in less than 13 months of its operations, Baraza has been able to change the narrative of the State, as youths have now cultivated the habit of saving instead of engaging themselves in militancy or other social vices. 

Baraza Cooperative, according to him, is growing an economy that will make people less dependent on state government or politicians, buying their conscience with N5, 000.00 during the election. 

According to him, “our vision is that in Bayelsa state as a case study, we will be able to eradicate poverty in the next ten years, now nine years. We started last year, so by 2030, in line with United Nations global goals, we will be able to eradicate poverty in Bayelsa state.

“We are growing our trade by the second quarter of this year to be able to get profits of a million dollars every day. 30 million dollars a month so we are growing a cooperative that will be able to get a monthly allocation more than the government of Bayelsa State. 

Bayelsa State is one of the states that get the highest allocation in the country, that is what we are heading towards and we are going to achieve it because the strategies are there.” 

 Reminiscing on how he started, he said: “When I knew about the online forex trade, I advertised free trading and trained over 300 of our people, not knowing that I will need many of them to join me in trading. It is most of these people I trained free that have joined the cooperative and joined our trade so we have a lot of trading infrastructures scattered all over the country and abroad. These are real-time traders that are trading for us.

“ Now in Bayelsa, it is very interesting because the Governor is aware of what we are doing and he has even asked us to send him a proposal to train 1000 youths in our state”. 

 He said BARAZA with over 40,000 members nationwide, has broadened its scope of operations with the building of 630 FOREX Trading infrastructures in Nigeria and Ghana. 

 According to him, “We are strong in Ghana, now with 130 Trading Infrastructures and Ghana is just 27 million people and we are building at least 500 trading infrastructures in Nigeria. When these things are running, it will generate profit for our members.

“We will also partner with AASME to strengthen our members to let them know how to convert this money to businesses and money for themselves so that this thing can have multiplier effects.”

Concluding, he said,  “We have also said we cannot do it alone, so if others pick this knowledge because it is a lifetime skill and duplicate it in their various clusters and communities, then there would be prosperity for all across Africa because we cannot just sit down and wait for the first world or the developed world to give us a handout, we cannot sit down and do that. Also, we cannot sit down and watch our young ones go through Libya, Mediterranean Sea, to Spain and Europe to go make ends meet and lose their lives.”