PMB, please don’t dig that N5,000 hole

Growing up, we were told of a First Republic politician who promised Sokoto people that if they were to vote for him he would provide them with taps that not only bring out fresh water but also “fura da nono”. I am not sure he got much millage out of that crazy promise, assuming the […]

Growing up, we were told of a First Republic politician who promised Sokoto people that if they were to vote for him he would provide them with taps that not only bring out fresh water but also “fura da nono”. I am not sure he got much millage out of that crazy promise, assuming the story itself was not a NPC propaganda. I never got to ask Uncle Waziri, in the two or three times I met him before his death, whether the story was even true. In any case I doubt whether even the illiterates were that gullible. Now the ruling APC is trying to outdo even that fantasy.
What is really sad is that it does not have to take that route. The vast majority who voted for APC did so because of Muhammadu Buhari and not because the even came across the party’s manifesto, not to talk of its promise to pay N5,000 a month to every unemployed person or provide free school meals. Now, from all indications, the government is taking that stupidity seriously.
Just last week, on a condolence visit to the Chairman of APC over the death of its candidate for the Kogi elections, my good friend, the new Minister of Youth and Sports, Barrister Solomon Darlung was quoted as saying that the N5,000 monthly payments to each unemployed Nigerian would start next year despite calls by many to scrap the non-viable and poorly conceived scheme.
This “promise” should not be kept for the simple reason that it would be a calamitous diversion and a waste.
To begin with, why N5,000? What would the unemployed do with N167 per day? Eat bread and pure water? Even the $1.25 a day UN poverty baseline would work out to at least N300 per day. The amount won’t go far. But cumulatively, if this is multiplied by their estimate of 25 million unemployed it would come to N125 billion a month, or N1.5 trillion per annum, about a quarter of the Federal Budget. If we also consider the 27m to 30m pupils, in our primary and lower secondary schools, both public and private, and assume a flat rate of N150 per meal to each child, we are looking at another N1.5 trillion per annum. Where would this amount be sourced from? To spend half of our national budget on some hair-brain schemes of dubious viability and value, what would be left to pay salaries and wages, not to mention paying for infrastructural provision and upgrading? How do we pay for health, education, water and security?
Come to think of it, just how many unemployed people are there? How do we even decide who is entitled and who is not? How do we decide who is or is not a Nigerian, or who is without a job? We don’t even have house numbers, street addresses or bank accounts. Someone has even started to complain that most of the money would go to “northerners” who are more in number. Who even told the crafters of these poorly thought out schemes that school lunch and pocket money are the main problems? Our schools lack qualified teachers, facilities and teaching aids. Transporting children to school often costs more than the lunch they carry. The unemployed want -no, NEED -, jobs not hand-outs. The schools need light, water, toilets, labs and libraries.
Sometimes it is better to come out and tell the people the bitter truth. President Buhari should take the bull by the horns and tell Nigerians that even though some of these promises were made they are not feasible, at least not now. The Hausa adage “Da mugun rawa, gara kin tashi” (Better not to stand-up at all, than get up and dance a shameful dance) is very apt here. It is true that the PDP and its supporters would say that APC reneged on some promises. That is still better than to be accused of leading the nation down a disastrous path. Nigerians would understand and forgive. They would hardly be expected to ignore an avoidable and costly disaster.
Which raises the question: who inserted these policy traps into the APC campaign Manifesto in the first place? Whoever did it must have been influenced by the Brazilian model of Bolsa Familia, among others. Or perhaps read the book Just Give Money to the Poor, by David Hulme. Which is good; it shows that at least Nigerian politicians are not averse to reading. However, we must be careful what we copy, and how. While it is true that cash transfers given to significant portions of a county’s population can transform the lives of the recipients there is no “one size fits all” solution. One, the state must afford it. Which Brazil, for example, was a case in point. Secondly, in its case, and in all other successful cases, the transfers were not just charity or safety net but a regular, guaranteed and fair supplement to family incomes so as to help with sending children to school, paying for healthcare, encouraging adoption of immunisation programs. In other words, the payments were design to supplement incomes from jobs, not replace jobs, and were mostly conditional and based on sustainable fiscal fortunes.
In the alternative, the Government could simply design a welfare scheme for the orphans, widows, the physically-challenged and those in extreme poverty, while it comes up with public works and other job creation programmes, as well as lower the costs of funds for industrialists and those seeking to start new enterprises. It should put an end to 25 to 30 percent interest rates killing the productive sectors. It should also come up with viable schemes to boost agriculture, mining and manufacturing while increasing the productivity and profitability of the SMEs. Conditional Cash transfer schemes is not necessarily a bad idea, but it should be well conceived, diligently implemented and perhaps time-bound to avoid a culture of entitlement and dependency. Rushing into obvious failure would not bring future votes.
Finally, if the proposed schemes are meant to boost purchasing power and kick-start the economy it may actually have the opposite effect. The Government may end up with no money to pay its workers and contactors, with nothing left for social services or infrastructure. This is the wrong time to gamble with the economy. Insisting that all government purchases be locally manufactured, and that all contractors show evidence of paying their workers the minimum wage are probably more portent alternatives. Right now the problem is the elite who hardly invest locally nor pay their workers living wages. They refuse to pay taxes. Governmental handouts cannot be real substitutes for a vibrant economy.