NSIP: Need for systemic overhaul

The National Social Investment Programme has been regarded by many as the most robust and comprehensive poverty alleviation programme of any government within collectible memory and one is tempted to say the most ambitious interventionist program till date. NSIP has stretched the visage of social Intervention and poverty alleviation beyond the boundaries, which previous such […]

The National Social Investment Programme has been regarded by many as the most robust and comprehensive poverty alleviation programme of any government within collectible memory and one is tempted to say the most ambitious interventionist program till date.

NSIP has stretched the visage of social Intervention and poverty alleviation beyond the boundaries, which previous such programmes had set and its many sub schemes including the N-Power programme focused on youth empowerment, the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme devoted to providing lunch for school children from less privileged homes, the Conditional Cash Transfer programme for the poorest of the poor and the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme, which provides farmers and market traders with stimulus packages to drive their businesses, is admittedly, a significant improvement on the existing programmes that sought to address poverty and its fallouts in Nigeria.  Now, while the NSIP has sought to adequately capture the expanding bandwidths of the numbers of socially disadvantaged persons in the Nigerian society, it is very clear to the discerning and foresighted that this is yet another ambitious government program that is threatened by imminent failure.

It is clear that Mr. President and his administration have placed a preponderance on improving the social and economic welfare of Nigerians and he has sought to match words with actions , hence the many changes and rejigging of the management and implementation of the NSIP , the most recent of which was the relocation of the NSIP Coordinating Office to the newly created Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development.

In truth, there is a sense in which those serving within the Buhari administration and more precisely the poverty alleviation space have little care or thought for the successful implementation of the president’s economic reform policies and his vision to tackle poverty in all its forms in Nigeria; they have failed to immerse themselves in the same nation building ideology and drive that underlies the president’s efforts to remove the stigmatising image of Nigeria’s designation as the poverty capital of the world. Or how else can one describe the litany of crises and scandals, which have attended the implementation of the multi-faceted NSIP and its pivotal four schemes, even in the face of deepening socio-economic woes? From the get-go, the NSIP had been daunted on all sides by all manners of perversion, not the least of which is the proliferation  of what many agree is Nigeria’s greatest social menace; Corruption!

Between 2016 when the programme was launched and 2019 on the heels of the reelection of the Buhari administration for a second term in office, reports published by the Coordinating Office of the NSIP have asserted that the program has so far, catered to the empowerment need of an estimated 700,000 Nigerian unemployed through its flagship programme, N-Power, another 9.3 million schoolchildren have benefitted from the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme, a total of 400,000 plus farmers and traders have received stimulus packages via the GEEP scheme and another 540,000 vulnerable households who have been captured in the National Social Register were also endowed with monthly stipends.

To its credit, the Buhari administration on the heels of reelection took a purportedly corrective, yet, ill-advised step to curtail the chaotic mess that inefficiency had wrought on the NSIP. Upon announcing his newly constituted cabinet, President Muhammadu Buhari instructed the immediate relocation of the NSIP Coordinating Office to the newly formed Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs. It was only a matter of time before the same circumstances that occasioned a move would bare its ugly fang again, this time in more virulent forms. A nasty power play between forces intervened in the shiftspace of collective synergy and rather than seek for ways to repair the damages that had been dealt the programme, even more chaos was wrought upon the system.

On its part, the Ministry headed by former DG of NCFMRI, Hajia Saddiya Umar Farouq evidently had little understanding of the intricacies involved in running an interventionist program. Worse still, there was a lack of willingness to collaborate with the already established coordinating organs in order to assure a success in the implementation of the NSIP. As if to make matters worse, the outbreak of the COVID -19 global pandemic did little to assuage the already tensed atmosphere pervading how the program had been handled since its relocation in September of 2019. If the mismanagement of the NSIP was anything to go by in the years preceding the outbreak of the pandemic, nothing comes close in comparison to the disastrous handling of the disbursement of the COVID- 19 pandemic rolled out by the government to cushion the effect of the attending lockdown informed by the pandemic.

There are not sufficient words to express the catastrophic handling of the program and how the fallouts dealt terrible blows to the citizens for whom the palliative was rolled out. As a matter of fact, only asinine minds would think to concede any measure of cheers or credit to how the ministry handled such a critical task.

In essence, one is not amiss to state quite unequivocally that the NSIP and its handling has in many respects failed woefully and only a sincere and committed effort by the government may help to salvage what is left of the program. At the risk of sounding stereotypical, a far-teaching reform and systemic overhaul of the entire programme in all its facets is critical to save what many an observer would be right in describing as a sinking ship beyond anchoring.

Whether the government would pay mind to the plethora of recommendations that have evinced from variegated critique and criticism of the programme and beyond the conventional tepid approach reform, make a bold and decisive move to fix the NSIP and ameliorate the social challenges of a vast number of vulnerable Nigerians, is yet to be seen. What is clear is, this one would need much more than a stitch, as time is fast running out and the numbers do not tell a palatable reality of the social and economic state of the nation and her citizens.

In the meantime, we may as well be saved by the melodrama that will undoubtedly pervade the summoning of the coordinators of the program to make a report before the National Assembly, as one faint provides more than enough catharsis for us all to deal with.

Marquis Okoruwa, writes in from Abuja

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