By Sentry
A common trait of Senators and members of the House of Representatives since the return of democracy in 1999 is excitement about figures, especially budgetary allocations. They are always quick to raise ad-hoc committees to probe how huge allocations are spent.
The same attitude was extended to alleged N2trillion spent on National Social Investment Programmes (NSIPs). Different government officials were summoned to explain how it was expended.
But it turned out that the NASS leadership pushed the cart before the horse. The Special Adviser to the President on Social Investments, Maryam Uwais, was not generous in criticising the leadership with facts and figures.
Uwais, in a statement, said: “While the total appropriation by the National Assembly (NASS) from inception, for the four NSIPs, is N1.7 trillion, the actual funds released for the NSIPs between January 2016 and October 2019 (when the NSIPs were handed over to the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development), amounted to N619.1 billion, constituting 36.4% of the total appropriation from the NASS.
“Also, the monies released for the N-SIPs can be further broken down into 14.03% (2016); 35% in 2017; 43.5% in 2018 and 57.8% (as at Sept 2019) of the N500B in 2016 and N400B appropriated for the subsequent years. It should be noted that for 2017 to 2020, the sum of N100B 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 NSIPs, 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: On the: 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); the 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 620,947Y cash transfer beneficiaries; and the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (managed by the Bank of Industry); a total of 2,279,380 TraderMoni, MarketMoni and FarmerMoni beneficiaries.”
Although the NASS leadership attempted to amend its position, an experienced lawmaker said:” It is obvious that the two chambers need a good research and data unit to guide its leaders on facts and what to say. This was the case in the second, third and to some extent in the fourth republics.”
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