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Last week, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajiya Sadiya Umar Farouk, informed Nigerians that her ministry had invested over N1.358 trillion in various programmes under its National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) in six years. According to the minister, over 15 million lives have been impacted. The total amount of money spent on N-Power initiative between 2016 and 2022, she added, was N890, 717, 910, 000. The ministry also invested N200, 999, 500, 000 on the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP). She also listed the number of beneficiaries for Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT), Tradermoni, Marketmoni, and Farmermoni.
The NSIP was established in 2016 to tackle poverty and hunger across the country. Under the NSIP are N-Power programme, CCT programme, Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) and the NHGSFP. The N-Power programme was designed to assist young Nigerians between 18 and 35 years to acquire and develop life-long skills. Beneficiaries are given N30, 000 monthly. The CCT programme supports people in the lowest poverty bracket through cash benefits. Under GEEP, traders, artisans, farmers, women and enterprising youths are provided loans of between N10, 000 and N100, 000 at no monthly cost. The NHGSFP targets young children with the aim of increasing school enrolment and reducing incidence of malnutrition as well as empowering community women as cooks.
We commend the government for its efforts so far in reducing poverty and hunger in the country. But, a critical appraisal of these programmes shows that they are far from achieving their set target. Let’s take the school feeding programme for example. Though a noble idea, the programme only gets to a limited number of children. Even at that, the quality of the food given to them reportedly does not meet the required standard. Also questionable was the modified version of the programme initiated at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Then, schools were shut down but there were still claims that homes were visited to feed schoolchildren in some selected states. Farouk said the FG decided to go ahead with the programme then because of its commitment and determination to cushion the hardship vulnerable schoolchildren faced at home due to COVID-19 lockdown.
Transparency in the implementation of some of the programmes is another contentious issue. The First Lady, Mrs. Aisha Buhari, in May 2019, said the NSIP failed woefully to achieve its aim in Kano and most parts of northern Nigeria. She regretted that the National Social Investment Office allegedly spent $16 million in buying mosquito nets which did not get to her village in Adamawa. The National Assembly had also queried the N12 billion purportedly spent monthly on the scheme, and even called the entire exercise a scam.
Farouk insisted that the process was transparent. “The number was quite huge, amid limited resources at our disposal. We could only do our best. We wish we could make everyone comfortable in this country but that is not very possible,” she noted last week.
The minister also claimed the number of people below the poverty line had dropped since the inception of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration. This is not correct. Two years after the commencement of the programme, for instance, the World Poverty Clock adjudged Nigeria as the poverty capital of the world. Then, those who lived in extreme poverty were about 86.9 million people. Today, that number has climbed to over 100 million. This was despite the pledge by the present government to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty by 2030. Nigeria is also among the top 10 countries regarded as the hunger hot spots in the world. Even in the Global Hunger Index, Nigeria has not fared well.
Besides, in a joint report last year, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) noted that food crisis had tightened its grip on Nigeria and 18 other countries. The rate of unemployment in Nigeria is conservatively put at over 33 per cent. Earlier this year, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) quoted the Cadre Harmonise, a government-led UN-supported food and nutrition analysis, as predicting that 25 million Nigerians risk severe hunger between June and August 2023. This figure is a projected increase from the over 17 million people currently at risk of food insecurity in the country. Also, nutrition stabilisation centres are reportedly filled with children fighting to stay alive.
By and large, the NSIP is a drop in the ocean of what Nigeria needs to combat poverty and hunger across the country. By government’s estimation, only about 15 million lives, out of over 200 million Nigerians, have been impacted. The government should either improve its implementation or cancel it outright. Resources are limited and should not be wasted on programmes that make little or no impact on the lives of the majority of Nigerians.
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