By Deborah Onyofufeke
In a bid to uplift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty, the Federal Government introduced various intervention programs to help achieve this but the irony of this is, that more than 100 million Nigerians have been plunged into poverty in this administration, with more children out of school now more than ever, roaming the streets and hunger, eating deep into the bellies of Nigerians. In this report, Deborah Onyofufeke, X-rays the FG’s National Social Investment Programs
With the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015, the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management, and Social Development was created in 2019 to coordinate the administration’s response to the humanitarian challenges in the country and lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty.
Sadiya Umar Farouq was appointed minister by President Buhari to pioneer this cause. With this, the National Social Investment Programmes (NSIP), was created as an intervention programme to help achieve the mandate of the ministry.
Four social intervention programmes were carved out and they include the Npower, Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT), National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP), and Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP).
Umar Faruoq, stated that the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) introduced by the Federal Government was created with the mandate to take Nigerians out of poverty.
Taking a look at the social Investment programmes, the N-Power was created to address the youth’s unemployment and increase social development, conditional cash transfer, CCT, was created to uplift households of the poor, and vulnerable across the country, improve consumption, and increase utilisation of health and nutrition services. It is also aimed at improving environmental sanitation and management, asset and financial acquisition, and beneficiaries’ engagement in sustainable livelihood.
The home-grown school feeding programme is the supply of a meal per day to primary one to three pupils in public schools across the country, while the GEEP was established to provide financial support and training to businesses and entrepreneurs at the bottom of the financial pyramid, by providing low-cost micro-lending to over a million women, enterprising youths, agricultural workers, and other vulnerable economic producers.
The GEEP supports the development of otherwise low-productivity sectors of the population, bringing millions of people into the modern economy and lifting communities out of poverty.
The loan scheme is designed under three flagship schemes: MarketMoni, TraderMoni, and FarmerMoni.
TraderMoni is designed to uplift under-privileged and marginalised youths aged between 18 and 40 years in Nigeria by providing them with loans of N50, 000 while MarketMoni is focused on under-privileged and marginalised women aged between 18 and 55 years like widows, divorcees amongst other vulnerable groups.
They would get interest-free loans of N50, 000 payable between six and nine months.
FarmerMoni is for Nigerian farmers aged between 18-55 years in rural areas. They would be provided with loans of up to N300, 000 to acquire farming input. This scheme has 12 monthly repayment plan, which included three months moratorium and nine months repayment period.
Back in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown, Nigeria’s Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management, and Social Development received N258.4bn between January and September 2020, out of which it spent N96.3bn of the sum within the same period.
Strike: SERAP sues Buhari, wants court to declare refusal to meet ASUU’s demands illegal
The ministry had claimed it spent N96bn in nine months to feed school children who were at home and not in session
The NSIP expenditure includes N66.1bn spent on recurrent expenditure and N29.1bn spent on capital projects.
After the revision of the 2020 budget due to the shortfall in government revenue as a result of COVID-19 and the drop in oil prices, a sum of N374.4bn was appropriated for the NSIP.
This comprised N292bn as recurrent expenditure, N50bn as capital expenditure, and N32.5bn as COVID-19 capital spending.
Additional 1 million poor Nigerians under the COVID-19 Intervention Fund to cover the development of a Rapid Response Register (RRR) and the provision of N5,000 to target beneficiaries over 12 months.
When the home-grown school feeding programme started in 2016, it was made known that the amount allocated for feeding school children was N70/child but it was difficult to implement this. An appeal was made to the president by the humanitarian minister and the NHGSFP was increased to N100 per child
With the implementation of N100 per child for one meal, the ministry disclosed that it will be spending N1bn daily to feed an estimated 10 million children benefitting from Tue scheme
Reaching out to pupils and teachers in some public primary schools in Edo state, Akoko-Edo local government area to be precise, they seem to never have heard of such a scheme going on in the country as they have never benefitted from this or any of the Federal government’s intervention programs except NPower.
According to a teacher at Opoze Primary School in Igarra, Mrs Ayami Ojongbede, it was heard as a rumour that such a scheme was coming to the pupils but to date, they are yet to partake in it
Also, a primary two pupil of Ugbogbo Primary School, Igarra, Adanini Ipemdo, affirmed what Mrs Ojongbede said, saying they haven’t received a single meal ever from the government or anybody
Another pupil of Imezua Primary School in Enwan, Akoko Edo LGA, Philip Adelowo, said they haven’t heard of the NHGSFP nor are there any beneficiaries in his community
On the fourth of April, 2022, Farouq, disclosed that two million people will start receiving about N20bn, from June as basic cash transfer and conditional cash transfer, as the two million people will get N5000 each under the basic cash transfer and an additional N5000, under the conditional cash transfer.
Gunmen attack Senator Ifeanyi Ubah’s convoy in Anambra
While there are reports of states like Katsina being the highest beneficiary, some states are yet to benefit from this programme which is designed to benefit all poor and vulnerable persons in the 36 states in Nigeria including the FCT.
The FG disclosed that it spent over N6.2bn to train and equip 16,820 Bauchi youths in the art of smartphone repairs to enable them to become financially self-reliant.
Farouq also said in Kano that N5.9bn has been invested to train Kano youths on how to repair smartphones, among other skill acquisition opportunities.
“The Federal Government is investing over N5.9bn for the training, tooling, and/or payment of monthly stipends on the Batch C beneficiaries. This is a tremendous direct injection of resources at the grassroots and in the hands of youths,” she said during the N-Skill Training trainees’ graduation on smartphone repairs in Kano.
The Government Enterprise and Empowerment program, GEEP(2.0) national phase, was launched by Sadiya Farouq, at the Daura Kasuwar Kofar ‘Yan Kudu market along Daura road, Katsina State, with 59,161 potential registered beneficiaries across the 34 LGAs of Katsina State.
With only 13,000 beneficiaries verified and cleared to benefit from the interest-free loans for the first phase of the programme, new registration is yet to commence.
