BUHARI'S FIGHT AGAINST POVERTY; A JAMBOREE
President Muhammadu Buhari, has spent more money fighting poverty than any Nigerian leader from 1960 till date. Yet the impact of the president's Social Intervention programs such as the Conditional Cash Transfer to the vulnerable, NPower scheme, Covid survival fund and others leaves more to be desired.
A person is said to be in a state of poverty if he or she earns less than one dollar and ninety cents a day, that's around nine hundred naira a day. According to the latest poverty index released by IMF, Nigeria has effectively retained its spot as the poverty capital of the world despite billions of dollars sunk into alleviating poverty by the PMB's Administration.
According to Seattle, Washington — Nigeria, just exceeded India with the largest rate of people living in extreme poverty. In Nigeria, about 86.9 million live in severe poverty, which is about 50% of its entire population. While the nation is smaller both geographically and in terms of population, it is failing at lowering the rates of poverty. This is partly due to the mismanagement of the oil business and the presence of corruption.
President Muhammadu Buhari's spending on Social Intervention funds from 2015 to 2020.
Since the inception of the school feeding program in 2016 by the PMB's Administration a whopping sum of 196.6 billion has been spent, feeding nine million school children across the country.
Still on social Intervention programs, the government has spent over 421 billion to fund the Npower program program from 2016 to 2020, despite the many irregularities that had marred the program. Over 15 billion has been spent on trader moni, market moni, and farmer moni; and over 15 billion spent on conditional cash transfers to millions of vulnerable Nigerians according to sources from the presidency. In total, over one Trillion naira has been spent on social Intervention programs from 2015 till date.
The question on the lips of most Nigerians is how has this spendings totally over a trillion, lifted the targeted groups out of poverty? To most Nigerians, however, the federal government's broad claims stink of falsehoods. The various programs, they avow, have neither aided vulnerable populations in any significant way, nor tackled poverty and hunger across the country.
On the contrary, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), and other international bodies show that despite four years of implementing the NSIP, the poverty level in the country has significantly increased, leading to widespread hunger and under-five deaths.
In its poverty and inequality report from September 2018 to October 2019 released in May this year, NBS said 40 per cent of Nigerians live below its poverty line of N137,430 ($381.75) per year. This represents 82.9 million people out of a population of about 200 million.
How can you tackle poverty by paying five thousand naira to the poor. For someone to live above the poverty line, he needs to earn at least $1.80 which is eight hundred naira daily, multiply it by thirty, it gives you twenty four thousand naira monthly, then how can you match the five thousand naira given to lift people out of poverty with the minimum of twenty four thousand required monthly?
Another question is, after six months, the conditional cash transfer ends, where do the beneficiaries run to? After collecting thirty thousand naira for two years, what's next for the N power beneficiaries? The ten thousand trader moni, what can it do to uplift the trading capital of market women considering the inflation in the market? What modalities have been put in place to ensure beneficiaries pay back these loans? Our government must stop this jamboree and come up with clear programs and policies to fight poverty.
Way forward....
The approach the presidency has taken in the fight against poverty is transactional approach borrowed from Mexico. Mexico have been giving out cash transfers to millions of their Citizens, but in Mexico, the rural communities have access to micro finance and the monies are distributed to these micro finance to handle. Government only supervises. Their economy is stronger than ours, there is access to power and government policies are friendly unlike in Nigeria.
On a contrary, you cannot give people monies as freebies and expect such freebies to lift them above poverty line. The government should support existing microfinance banks like lapo and others to expand their operations to rural communities, then domicile special funds with these microfinance banks and spell out the conditions for the loans. The banks will be able to know those who really need these loans for businesses and individuals who are credit worthy. Not politicians junketing from markets to markets sharing money as if we are in a Banana Republic.
Secondly, poverty thrives mostly in rural communities because of lack of acces to affordable and quality education and health care, and other social amenities. The ministry of Agriculture, if we have any, needs to deploy agricultural extension workers to our agrarian communities to teach them on modern farming techniques. Agricultural with it's long value chain, have the potential to empower millions of rural dwellers and stop the negative trend of rural to urban migration.
In the same vein, cutting down on government recurrent spendings and diverting such funds to create innovation hubs for young entrepreneurs can reduce unemployment drastically. There are over one hundred and fifty federal government agencies, departments and parastatals. Most of them with duplicative functions. we should put mechanisms in place to reduce them in phases so as not to affect thousands of civil servants that work there.
In these MDAs, there are over one thousand directors and CEOs. Averagely every four years, these individuals are given brand new vehicles just like our legislators, millions as estacodes, and expend millions of naira organising workshops and seminars that made us the capital poverty of the world. From the analysis of the 2019 budget, over 200 Billion naira was spent on purchase of cars for these group of people. If we spend this much, I dont think we are serious about ending poverty.
Lifting people out of poverty is not by speaking eloquently on national television, when we put in efforts to genuinely fight poverty, the results will speak out. When you send a child to school, if he fails to study, everything shows in his results. The results as regards to the level of poverty in Nigeria is mindboggling, and the government must scrutinize its policies and programs that have not yielded any positive impact, despite billions of naira sunk into them.
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