The President, Co-operative Federation of Nigeria (CFN), Chief Tajudeen Oriyomi Adeola, has disclosed that the co-operative is already contributing over N150 billion to the Lagos State government’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) yearly because of its strategic role in uplifting the lives and welfare of the members.

Adeola, who stated this yesterday in his message at the fourth National Co-operative Summit in Abuja, said if proper legislation had been put in place to drive operation of co-operatives in the country, the CFN in particular stands to contribute over 20 per cent to the nation’s GDP.

Our worry today is that the contributions of co-operatives are yet to be captured in the national GDPs, otherwise, government would have paid more attention to the sector,” he said.He said that in line with the aspirations and agitations of co-operators that CFN should embark on strategies that will result in the establishment of a Cooperative Bank that will understand and attend to their needs having lost the former one to the bank consolidation exercise by the Central Bank of Nigeria in 2005, preliminary work on this and to large extent, the registration of a new co-operative bank, is already on course.

‘’The consultant on this project is in our midst, we hope to come up with affirmative actions on how to raise N3 billion required as the co-operative movement’s share capital in the proposed bank. A things being equal, our bank is expected to start business come January 1, 2019,” he further said.