Periscoping the Gains of the National Social Investment Programme
Five years ago, when the Federal Government of Nigeria established the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), many people didn’t envisage that it will start yielding fruits too soon.
Five years after, Nigerians are now beginning to feel the impact of the programme, established by the Mohammadu Buhari-led administration in 2016, to tackle poverty and hunger across the country.
Nigerians were told ab initio, that the suite of programmes under the NSIP focuses on ensuring a more equitable distribution of resources to vulnerable populations, including children, youth and women.
So far, NSIP has not deviated from that focus. For instance, the N-Power programme is designed to assist young Nigerians between the ages of 18 to 35 to acquire and develop life-long skills, for becoming change makers in their communities and players in the domestic and global markets. Each beneficiary is given a stipend of N30,000 monthly.
The Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programme on its own part, directly supports those within the lowest poverty bracket by improving nutrition, increasing household consumption and supporting the development of human capital through cash benefits to various categories of the poor and vulnerable. The support is conditioned on fulfilling soft and hard co-responsibilities that enable recipients improve their standard of living.
While the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) is a micro-lending intervention that targets traders, artisans, enterprising youth, farmers and women in particular, by providing loans between 10,000 and 100,000 at no monthly cost to beneficiaries, the Home Grown School Feeding Programme (HGSFP) aims to deliver school feeding to young children with a specific focus on increasing school enrolment, reducing the incidence of malnutrition (especially among the poor and those ordinarily unable to eat a meal-a-day), empowering community women as cooks and by supporting small farmers that help stimulate economic growth.
In line with the focus of the federal government, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq, recently disclosed plans to incorporate additional five million pupils into the school feeding scheme before the end 2023 to the already nine million pupils benefiting from the daily free meal.
Umar Farouq, represented by the Zonal Monitor of the National Home-Grown School Feeding program, Abubakar Sulaiman, revealed the plan during a courtesy visit to the Akwa Ibom State Governor, Udom Emmanuel, yesterday in Abuja.
She said “Today, we are here in Akwa Ibom State on the strength of our partnership and mutual recognition of the need to do more on the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme NHGSFP, to bring more Nigerians under the umbrella of the Government’s social protection mechanism, to look at scaling up the number of the pupils benefiting from the Program.”
With over 100,000 cooks employed and more than 100,000 smallholder farmers participating in this value chain, the minister said the NHGSFP is a serious potential for socio-economic development if strengthened and sustained nationwide.
She added that she will continue to work with State and Federal NHGSFP teams as well as key stakeholders such as the National Bureau of Statistics, Ministry of Education, National Orientation Agency, National Population Commission, National Youth Service Corp, UBEC and State Education boards for effective results.
“We are working jointly and closely to verify the existing number of beneficiaries on the program and update the records for better effectiveness, transparency and accountability,” she said.
Similarly, no fewer than 14 million pupils across the country are expected to benefit from the NHGSFP by 2023. The additional 5 million pupils were being targeted by 2023 in addition to the existing 9 million pupils who are benefiting from the daily free nutritious meal during school term nationwide.
The Minister who reiterated the present administration’s resolve to ensure that more children are captured in its social protection programmes. She also affirmed the Administration’s readiness to sustain the working relationship with various States and Federal NHGSFP teams as well as key stakeholders.
Encouraging beneficiaries to be part of the wheel of progress, the Minister charged them to judiciously use the grant to improve their living standard by utilising it as seed capital do boost their trades and businesses for greater income.
According to the minister. since the inception of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration in 2015, the federal government has paid more attention to addressing the plight of the poor and vulnerable in the country despite the economic slump and glaring revenue challenges, especially as poverty reduction has become a major objective of governments all over the world and a key goal every country is working towards, in order to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
She said no single approach can be relied upon to achieve poverty reduction goal, hence a combination of strategies, each targeting specific sectors among the population, and that informed the decision by the federal government to initiate the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) as a strategy for reducing poverty and enhancing social inclusion.
The NSIP is adjudged as the largest social protection programme in Africa with over $1billion earmarked annually to cause positive changes in the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable in the country.
“Since its introduction in 2016, the social investment programme has impacted positively on the lives of the poor and vulnerable in Nigeria as millions of households have benefitted from these NSIP interventions in the last 5 years. This included payment of a monthly Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) of N5,000.00 to 1 million indigent Nigerians to protect them against economic shocks and gradually elevate them out of poverty.
On the conditional cash transfer, Akwa Ibom State Governor, Mr Udom Emmanuel represented on the occasion by the Commissioner for Women Affairs and Social Welfare, Dr Ini Adiakpan commended the efforts of President Muhammadu Buhari for putting in place poverty alleviation programmes mostly targeted at women.
“Today, I join the beneficiaries of this particular Cash grant, to thank the government for this N20,000 one-off grant to the rural women. This money will go a long way in cushioning the hard economic realities birthed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Akwa Ibom State Women are known for their enterprise and industry. Our rural women engage mostly in petty trading, farming, palm oil production, soap making and would stop at nothing if assisted to expand their trade and vocation. “The government of Akwa Ibom State led by an enterprising and women friendly Governor, His Excellency, Mr Udom Emmanuel since assumption of office has vigorously pursued programmes aimed at not only mitigating poverty but also to restore the dignity of women in the state,” she stated.
Speaking on behalf of other beneficiaries, Mrs Caroline Usen praised President Buhari for the programme, saying the money would be judiciously utilised., “Today is a great day. We are happy and we will use the money judiciously. We thank the President who has done this for us. May God bless him”.
40 vehicles for COVID-19 Action Recovery and Economic Stimulus
As part of the Ministry’s mandate, the Minister recently handed over 40 operational vehicles for onward distribution to coordinators of the state COVID-19 Action Recovery and Economic Stimulus (NG-CARES).
The vehicles which were procured by the Federal Project Support Unit of the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs were handed over to the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning Prince Clem Ikande Agba.
A statement to this effect by the minister’s Special Assistant on Media, Nneka Ikem Anibeze, explained that “The NG CARES is the federal government initiative with support from the World Bank to mitigate the effects of the COVID 19 pandemic.”
“Presenting the vehicles, the minister thanked the World Bank for coming to the aid of the poor and vulnerable people of Nigeria affected by the Covid-19 pandemic,” the statement said.
“Let me also commend the efforts of the steering committee for N-CARES and the Federal Cares Technical Committee for their efforts in ensuring that the intervention from the World Bank gets to the people at the grassroots. There is no doubt that this assistance from the World Bank will impact the beneficiaries as well as contribute to the rebuilding of the economy and prosperity in Nigeria. I, therefore, urge the States and the FCT to ensure adequate utilisation of the vehicles and the resources from the World Bank to bring happiness to our people.
“Prince Agba thanked the Umar Farouq for the special role played by the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, her untiring efforts and facilitatory role played by the agencies under her supervision in the preparatory activities of the N-Cares Programme.
“The handover of the vehicles is preparatory to the implementation of the NG CARES programme. All States and the FCT are participating in the two-year emergency programme.”
Meanwhile, it will be recalled that the federal government has equally inaugurated the third batch (Batch C) of the N-Power exercise on the National Social Investment Management System (NASIMS), in the first quarter of this year in Abuja. NASIMS is the central management platform for the administration and coordination of the National Social Investment Programmes (NSIP) under the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development. The inauguration was chaired by the Honourable Minister Sadiya Umar Farouq.
An elated Farouq told her audience that the inauguration was in continuation of the on-going strategy by the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government to lift 100 million people out of poverty in ten years.
She revealed that Batches ‘A’ and ‘B’ had already been implemented, stating that the 500,000 beneficiaries, under Batch C, will benefit in the first stream of the on-going process for batch ‘C’, while the same number of Nigerians will benefit in the second stream.
Her words: “I am delighted that we are gathered today for the launch of the Batch ‘C’ on the National Social Investment Management System (NASIMS). The N-Power cluster, which is a combination of many sub-cluster initiatives, is aimed at providing opportunities in skills acquisition, competency building, and entrepreneurship training among the poor for human capital development.
“The N-Power, Government Enterprise Empowerment Programme, National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme, and Conditional Cash Transfer are undergoing series of strategic realignment and restructuring with the view to optimise their operations and maximise their impacts. Today, we have reached another milestone in the process of recruiting and on-boarding of the Batch C N-Power beneficiaries, beginning with 500,000 beneficiaries.”
Farouq further explained that the new batch will drive skills acquisition for beneficiaries, with the goal to ensure that they are economically active and possess the right vocational skillset to attract gainful employment when they graduate. The beneficiaries will be paid N30,000 each as monthly stipend.
INDEPENDENT MONITORS
To boost effective monitoring of all NSIP programmes, in the country, Umar Farouq, recently kicked off the handing over of engagement letters and tablets to trained independent monitors of the National Social Investment Programme. As at today, officials of the ministry have gone round the 36 states of the Federation with a charge to achieve three critical milestones: deliver the engagement letters and tablets; acquaint the independent monitors with the handling of the electronic devices (tablets) that have been designed to monitor a designated number of beneficiaries of the NSIP in their localities and thirdly, undertake enumeration and evaluation of the Home Grown School Feeding programme.
They Independent Monitors whose letters of engagement clearly spell out the scope of their work, will be paid a monthly stipend of N30,000, with the proviso that they must meet up to 80% of their deliverables monthly to be eligible for their stipend.
Farouq stated that the devices are equipped with an application that will be used to report on monitoring activities of the trained independent monitors. All devices distributed for the monitoring of this programme are locally made in Nigeria and the monitoring application designed by an indigenous company.
The Minister charged the independent monitors not to reassign their responsibilities to a third party and to carry out the assignment with utmost sense of patriotism, adding that every independent monitor will be held accountable by the Ministry for the task given them.
