Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu says his government has supported 1,835 businesses affected by the mayhem that followed the #EndSARS protests with N939.98 million.

The Commissioner for Wealth Creation and Employment, Yetunde Arobieke, disclosed this during the 2021 Ministerial Press Briefing in commemoration of Mr Sanwo-Olu’s second year in office.

Ms Arobieke said the ministry set up the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise Recovery Fund to support businesses in Lagos, whose properties and assets were vandalised post-#EndSARS protests that rocked the nation in October 2020.

She added Lagos supported businesses with money ranging from N50,000 to N5 million to beneficiaries to rebuild their businesses with funding from the government, corporate organisations, and private individuals.

“With a total of 1,835 beneficiaries and N939.98 million disbursed, 10,005 direct jobs and 40,020 indirect jobs were saved.

“The achievements recorded so far by the ministry have been made possible through the unwavering support of the Governor of Lagos State, Mr Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu, in his pursuits to mitigate unemployment in Lagos State,” the commissioner said.

Ms Arobieke stated further that the governor had approved creating a model and robust online marketplace with a lot of features that make it globally competitive.

The aim, according to her, is to expose the artisans to the global market and scale up their potentials, and government-certified artisans onboarded on the app. 

She disclosed that 2,000 artisans selected from registered trade associations were retrained in 2020, while the retraining and equipping of another batch of 2,000 artisans would soon commence.