The disagreement between the presidency and the National Assembly leadership over the management of the Federal Government Social Investment Programme (SIP) worsened yesterday.
It was learnt that Senate President Ahmed Lawan and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila recently, in a media report, made some allegations against the handlers of the SIP and described the programme as a scam.
The presidency, in a statement issued by Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on Social Investments, Maryam Uwais, yesterday titled “Lawan, Gbajabiamila got it wrong”, provided statistics, figures and listed examples of how much was released to the programme and how the fund was used.In the statement, she described as untrue, many of the allegations made by the two presiding officers of the National Assembly.
Uwais said the allegation that the SIP has gulped over N2 trillion since 2016, when the fund was created was untrue.
“Although the total appropriation by the National Assembly from inception, for the 4 N-SIPs is N1.7 trillion, the actual funds released for the N-SIPs between January 2016 and October 2019 (when the N-SIPs were handed over to the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development), amounted to N619.1 billion, constituting 36.4 per cent of the total appropriation from the NASS.
“The monies released for the N-SIPs can be further broken down into 14.03 per cent (2016); 35 per cent in 2017; 43.5 per cent in 2018 and 57.8 per cent (as at Sept 2019) of the N500 billion in 2016 and N400 billion appropriated for the subsequent years. It should be noted that for 2017 to 2020, the sum of N100 billion was appropriated specifically for the National Housing Fund hosted by the Federal Ministry of Finance. These releases covered operational activities and payments to 13,363,680 beneficiaries across all the 4 N-SIPs, all of whom can all be verified either through their BVN numbers or their unique numbers generated by the National Social Register, those identities having been generated for the poorest of the poor who do not own bank accounts for sundry reasons.
“As at September 2019, the funds had been expended as follows:
• Job creation programme (549,500 N-Power graduates and non-graduates and 7 Technology Hubs);
• National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (in 33 states, 9,963,762 pupils to 107,862 cooks in 54,952 primary schools);
• National Cash Transfer Programme (including the development of the National Social Register by the National Social Safety Net Coordination Office) 1,491,296 poor and vulnerable households comprising 6,056,872 individuals in 33 states and 620,947 cash transfer beneficiaries;
• Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (managed by the Bank of Industry); and
•a total of 2,279,380 TraderMoni, MarketMoni and FarmerMoni beneficiaries,” Uwais explained.
According to her, it is not true that as part of the conditions for poor and vulnerable beneficiaries to be engaged, they are made to apply online, through the internet and they require a BVN for payment.
“The National Cash Transfer Programme derives all the cash transfer beneficiaries from a National Social Register (NSR), comprising state social registers that are developed and hosted by the ministry of planning of each state. The process for objective identification of poor and vulnerable households is as provided in the Financing Agreement (F.A) signed between Nigeria and the World Bank, for which purpose the World Bank IDA Credit and the recovered funds from the Abacha family are being utlised.
“The process involves a poverty mapping of the LGAs in each state, community mobilization, targeting and identification supported by trained enumerators at state and LGA levels, after which each of the households identified by the communities is visited and data collated, which information includes fields such as the size of household, age, gender, persons with disability (if any), assets, vocation of head of household, educational qualifications (if any) and dwelling house conditions, among others.
“Finally, all the data collated is subjected to a proxy means testing formula to determine those who merit the grants and the accompanying training. Even though each state hosts its own information, all of the data is hosted at the national level as the National Social Register. As at March 31st 2020, the NSR comprised 11,045,537 individuals from 2,644,495 households, collated from 35 states, 453 LGAs, 47,698 communities. Each and every beneficiary has a generated unique number and can be tracked.
“It is only in respect of the job creation programme that applications are made online. That particular programme was initiated for youth who consist of graduates and non-graduates, as with JAMB candidates who continue to apply for their own admission, online. Indeed, all the LGAs around the country currently have N-Power beneficiaries serving in sundry capacities.”
The presidential aide also dismissed the claim by the Senate that the NSIP information was not accessible to the National Assembly.
“It is, however, on record that all invitations to public hearings and meetings by the NASS were honoured by myself (as the supervisor of the N-SIPs) and the cluster teams, while documents relating to the structure, activities and progress of the N-SIPs were routinely shared with them, over the period that the NSIO supervised the N-SIPs under the auspices of the Office of the Vice President (OVP). Furthermore, the monthly reports of 3,000 N-Power monitors, spread across the 774 LGAs, are available to both Poverty Alleviation Committees of the NASS,” she said.
