Concerns of her excellency, the wife of the president on Social Investments Programme

BY ISMAEEL AHMED

The Social Investment Programmes is presently rounding off its First Phase of Operations, and the National Social Investment Office has been organising a series of programmes to highlight the achievements of the SIPs in the past three (3) years since its implementation 2016-2019.

Just last week, we held a World Press Conference at the State House Auditorium where we, in great detail, expounded on the performances of our individual programmes across the various States of the country. However, the recent concerns raised by Her Excellency The Wife of the President on the implementation of the Programme especially in the Northern part of the country, which we are sure is borne out of her genuine desire to see the programme achieve its maximum potential, has necessitated the NSIO to issue this statement in order to further clarify the status of the programme with particular regards to the two States of Adamawa and Kano as mentioned by Her Excellency.

The programme so far has reached over 12 million direct beneficiaries across the country. 500,000 young people are employed under the N-Power Scheme; over 9.7 million children in over 53 thousand government primary schools in 31 States are being fed daily – with over a hundred thousand cooks; 422,992 care givers of households in 26 States are being paid 10,000 Naira every two months under the cash transfer programme; while over 1.6 million collateral free loans have been provided under the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme – this includes the Farmer Moni, Market Moni and Trader Moni schemes.

In Adamawa State, for example, as cited by Her Excellency, Mrs Buhari, the total number of Trader Moni (that is the 10,000 Naira interest-free loan) beneficiaries as at today stands at 30,785 traders who have already been paid in 16 markets where the Trader Moni Market Activation took place, with 55% of these beneficiaries being women.

To be more specific, below are the names of some of the markets where the activation and payments took place in different parts of Adamawa State:

Adamawa State also enjoys more than 11,000 N-Power graduate beneficiaries who are receiving the monthly stipend of 30,000 naira every month, while another 167,853 children are being fed in 1,054 public primary schools in the State since October 2018. For Cash Transfer, we are in several communities within 12 Local Governments in Adamawa, with 16,859 households benefitting from the transfers. A few of the communities are;

Adamawa State

 These are verifiable communities and can be visited for confirmation at anytime and by anyone. In Kano State, there are more than a 100,000 beneficiaries of Trader Moni with many more enumerated and waiting to be paid in about 35 markets, some of which are:

It is important to note that the Trader Moni Programme is anchored under the Bank of Industry (BOI) as the finance house. BOI recruits agents who go out to markets for enumeration of potential beneficiaries. The enumeration is followed by market activation (which involves enrollment of already enumerated potential beneficiaries), after which payment commences to beneficiaries successfully verified by the Bank of Industry.

Kano State has one of the highest numbers of N-Power Beneficiaries at 18,594 graduates currently employed in the programme and exactly 1,043,014 children are being fed public primary schools across the state.

Conditional Cash Transfers in Kano State has a total number of 51,350 households as beneficiaries, and these beneficiaries are spread across a total of 1,651 communities in Kano.

Here are a few of the LGA’s and Communities in the state where beneficiaries are being paid the bi-monthly N10,000 Conditional Cash Transfer stipend:

KANO STATE:

The beneficiaries of the Conditional Cash Transfers are enumerated and verified by the National Social Safety Net Coordinating Office (NASSCO), after which they uploaded unto the National Social Register (NSR), using laid down guidelines to determine their poverty status. It is from the NSR that the National Cash Transfer Office (NCTO) pays out the N5,000 monthly stipend to beneficiaries.

In all the States of the federation, we have Focal Persons appointed by the individual State Governments to liaise with our teams and also act as State monitors of the programmes. The Focal Persons in Adamawa is Commodore Usman Sali Bodes (Rtd.), who is the SA on Social Investments, and in Kano, Aisha Jaafar Yusuf, who is the Honourable Commissioner of Education. They can be reached to verify these figures.

We also wish to highlight the roles played by of some of our partners on these programmes, such as the World Bank, Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice (ANEEJ, comprising over 500 monitors), which leads the Monitoring the Use of Recovered Assets in Nigeria through Transparency and Accountability (MANTRA) project, as well as Action Aid – which organisation coordinates 37 indigenous CSOs – who also act as monitors to check the efficacy and delivery of these programmes. These CSOs continue to provide independent assessments as to how we are faring.

We appreciate the complexity and challenges of implementing these programmes on such large scales and we will continue to improve on efficient, effective and transparent methods of our delivery. We welcome any information on any specific instances or issues that may have come to the attention of Her Excellency on any matter related to the implementation of the programme so as to help us improve.

We are open to constructive suggestions and contributions from all well-meaning quarters to improve the reach and impact of the programmes that will benefit all Nigerians.

Our up to date information can be found on our website at www.n-sip.gov.ng