NAPEP has no N7bn idle fund in banks –NAPEP boss

Much has gone into the war against poverty in Nigeria by successive governments, yet we still see poverty everywhere. Where did we go wrong? I think that the problem is a national one, and it is historical in context. If you go back, you find that in 1980, the rate in Nigeria was just about […]

Much has gone into the war against poverty in Nigeria by successive governments, yet we still see poverty everywhere. Where did we go wrong?

I think that the problem is a national one, and it is historical in context. If you go back, you find that in 1980, the rate in Nigeria was just about 28%, in 1985, the poverty rate was about 46%, in 1992, the poverty rate was still about 42%, in 1996, the poverty rate had climbed to 65.6% and in 1999, the poverty rate was 70%. So it kept going up. So, you see something wrong was happening. You can go and check, but the fact is that the economy was growing on the average of about 2.2% over that time and the population was growing across 16% over that time. That means the population was growing faster than the economy, meaning the income was growing slowly but then the mouths to feed grew astronomically. Therefore, you won’t have enough to take care of a lot of things.

So, what caused that?

What caused it was that we went through a period that our policies were not strong enough, attitude probably changed and as Nigerians, we were not as committed to development as a country. I am not blaming any person in particular, but as a country, we didn’t do what we should have done and so, collectively we suffered. Since 2000, with the Obasanjo administration, Yar’adua and Jonathan, the economy has average growth rate of 6% and as a result, poverty rate declined from 70% in 1999 to 54% in 2004 when the last Nigerians living standard survey was done. That is almost 20% percent drop in poverty rate. So, that is in line with stronger growth in the economy. So, if economy grows up, poverty rate comes down. The problem we have is that even at 50%, poverty rate is still very high in Nigeria. Nigeria has over 160 million people, which means 80 million people are still poor. At a time that the population was like 70 million, if we have 50%, it then means only 35 million persons are poor. But now, we are many, so you see a lot of poor people. The Nigerian space has not expanded over time. It is the same space but the number of poor people is rising that is why it is a great problem, even though there is improvement-some persons are also doing well. We have seen what we never had before. We are flying all over the place, and we have cell phones, DSTV and all that. So, some people are doing well, but still a lot of people are not doing well, because we have 50% poverty rate. So that is why we have poverty that we have. But I think this administration will face poverty eradication squarely because President Jonathan and his deputy, Sambo, have been talking very strongly about addressing poverty and I am sure it would be a key priority of the administration. So I believe that as we go into the elections, we have people who are also committed to issues of poverty and things will happen.

There is this insinuation that the very poor in the society are not benefiting from NAPEP programs because NAPEP activities are city based. How would you react to that?

The activities are never city-based. That is a wrong insinuation because NAPEP has a structure where there is NAPEP office in every state of the federation and the Federal Capital and when you get to the states, there is someone responsible for every local government. When the money comes through the headquarters, we share it equally to all the states. So if you are in Katsina, they people in Katsina go to the local government and implement them. The are implemented at the local government level from the state and not from the headquarters. So, that insinuation is wrong.

Keke NAPEP scheme appears to be the only program of NAPEP. Our readers would like to know other things you do besides Keke project.

Poverty eradication is not just about Keke NAPEP. For it to be good, strong and effective, you must also have strong economic growth that leads to poverty reduction. I would use this illustration. It is like a room that is deluged with water, like in this room now you have high volume of water, and with 50% poverty rate, is like you have waist-high water-it comes half way of your body. So, that kind of room you cannot give someone a mope to go and mop it. Poverty eradication is like mopping up something. You hook up a hose to the room, create a pump out there, and you press the button and water is evacuated from the room. When you get to floor level, then you bring a mope and you mop it.

Poverty eradication is not reduction but total termination. NAPEP is about the mopping, eradication of poverty, economic growth is the engine to sack the water out. Here we need infrastructure, electricity. We need good education for quality knowledge where we can graduate good medical doctors, engineers and you need good roads for you to evacuate good products that you have produced. You need good training for your teachers so that you can have good products and even in health, so that people can be free from malaria and typhoid fever and all other diseases.

You need security. You need law and order. Rule of law and you need these in place and are maintained. These are the things that speed up economic growth. When all these are not in place and you give NAPEP two-three-four billion to go and eradicate poverty in Nigeria, is like giving them a mope to go and mop high water. So it is not NAPEP’s fault for you the kind of high poverty that we have in the country today.

We have done the calculations. Even if you give NAPEP N100 billion to go and fight poverty, it would not be enough. If we are lucky, we can reach 10% of the population with N100 billion because the population of poor people is too high. We need to bring it down to like 40 -20 million or thereabout for NAPEP to push its hands around with the kind of resources we have. Even so, most of the things we do are not physical for people to see and that is why they only talk about Keke NAPEP they see moving around.

We meet with governors and we talk to them all the time. When I first became national coordinator of NAPEP, only Ogun state had a poverty programme. They ran it contemporaneously with our poverty program. They call it Ogun State Employment and Poverty Eradication programme (OGEPEP). No other state had it that time but now every state has poverty eradication programme. Not just that, some states have full fledged commissioner, some special adviser, some have a D-G in charge of poverty eradication. The awareness is as a result of our programme. So when the government pursues specific poverty programme, people would not say it is because NAPEP told them, and it is not necessary to say so.

We have another programme, Conditional Cash Transfer Programme. That is one of the best in the world with the resources that we have. The programme makes sure kids stay in school with the provision of basic income guarantee of up to N5000 every month to qualified household. Anybody who has followed that programme adjudged it to be one of the best in the world and we created it here ourselves. The good thing about it is that it graduates people off the programme as well as poverty in 12 months. After 12 months, we remove you from the programme and poverty, and you can now live life like any other person in the society. So, basically the programme has to link the poorest of the poor to the mainstream economy so they can be like anybody else. But the only problem we have is fund. Like in this year’s budget, we only have N1 billion for it. Somebody can say NAPEP is not doing anything, but we are managing our one billion as effectively as we can. The N1 billion I am talking about we have not received it yet. We only got a warrant the other day saying it is coming.

We have Village Economic Development Solution programme (VEDS) where we give micro credit to people. But we tried to set up an anchor activity and in states like Katsina, Kebbi and others. You can confirm this from state coordinators to take you to where we have that anchor activities. What we do in this anchor activity is our processing places, so that if people have comparative activities, say in planting ground nut. There is a ground nut processing place where farmers of groundnut can bring their ground nut for processing. If it is cassava, we take it to cassava processing place for gari or flour. With processing facility working, there is a value chain causing farmers and people working at the centre to be successful. So we create jobs in that way. We invented the programme here and we are keeping it running.

We also have our promise keeper programmme. We do that through churches and mosques where we give N10, 000, N20, 000, N50, 000 to the poorest of the poor through churches and mosques. These three programmes are our core programme and they are going on very effectively. The selection is open. We don’t do it and the people select people themselves.

Your Keke project is about the most visible. What is the state of the phase three of the Keke programme?

The phase three Keke NAPEP has experienced obvious challenges and the whole country knows about it now. It has become a very popular issue because so much money was put into it N2.4 billion. What happened is that in 2007, we gave the contract job to supply 5000 units of tricycles and some spare parts. As we speak, we still have 1, 300 units that have not been supplied. The principal explanation that I can give you is that the supplier told us that he experienced difficulty when there was port congestion and he could not get all the products out and then the products incurred demurrage and he doesn’t have the money to pay the demurrage. I had gone to the port to meet with the leadership of the NPA, two comptroller-Generals of customs, and other terminal operators who are private citizens here in Abuja and Lagos. We begged them to reduce the demurrage for the contractor which they have done. We thought we had gone to where we could get it done; Somehow, we still have this difficulty.

There is this report in the media recently that over N7 billion NAPEP fund is left idle in two banks. What is the true position?

I think that the report which came out in Trust and probably other papers is false and I want this ‘underlined and boldened’ that there is no N7 billion idling away in any bank connected with NAPEP. The only rationale I can put to the story is that there was N5 billion that was given to NAPEP for the Village Economic Development Programme and another N2.2 billion for COPE programme but that was back in 2008 and this money is long disbursed out in the same 2008, and we are now in 2010, and some persons are insinuating that money that was disbursed over two years ago is still in the bank. That is not correct and I think that is a wicked lie and who ever took such story to the press should be called to order. It is libelous, it is scandalous and scurrilous aimed at tarnishing my image because it is a clear lie and even the senate said it didn’t divulge such report to any reporter and I have verbal and written confirmation from the senate committee. So, there is no truth to the story. I also invite anybody to go to the two banks, Oceanic and Intercontinental banks to verify whether there is any money from NAPEP that is lying there idle since 2008.