NSIPA’s suspension: Reinventing social investment programmes

Mind boggling allegations of thefts and misappropriation of funds that are meant for various social intervention schemes lately forced President Bola Tinubu to suspend the National Social Investment Programmes Agency (NSIPA). While the suspension is apt, it is not to the credit of the current administration that the trend of thieving in the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation has continued in a new government and new votes have been awarded to programmes without a forensic audit of past initiatives or strategy to do things differently. It is important to note that both the ministry and the suspended interventions were created to meet the needs of poor and vulnerable Nigerians, who keep increasing in number by the day. The government, therefore, must urgently clear the Augean stable and make the social intervention work for the poor without excuses.

Following allegations of corruption and misappropriation trailing the social intervention schemes, President Tinubu directed the suspension of the National Social Investment Programmes Agency (NSIPA) and all its intervention programmes for at least six weeks in the first instance. Caught on the web of suspension are the N-Power Programme, Conditional Cash Transfer, Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme as well as the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP). Reports have it that Tinubu has subsequently constituted a ministerial panel to conduct a thorough review of the agency’s operations to recommend necessary reforms.

It is alarming that corruption in public offices has become rampant, to the extent that even the humanitarian ministry is not immune to it. This means that the privileged and wealthy are stealing from the poor, which is a grave injustice. The racket predated the Tinubu-led administration and is not peculiar to the so-called humanitarian ministry. For sins of the last administration, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) arrested and detained the National Coordinator and Chief Executive Officer of NSIPA, Halima Shehu, over an ongoing probe into the N37.17 billion allegedly laundered, under former Minister, Sadiya Umar-Farouk. President Tinubu also suspended his Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Edu, following a public outcry against the misappropriation of funds in less than six months in office. The EFCC is currently investigating Edu for alleged breach of due process in the award of contracts worth N3 billion to cronies, alleged N585 million request for payment into a private account and other scandals in her ministry. In all, over N44 billion worth of fraud has been uncovered in the humanitarian ministry alone.

While the president has been commended for his response to sweeping cases of sleaze, the tardiness of the Tinubu-led administration both in the choice of officials and handling critical social programmes further exposed the critical ministry to saboteurs in the system. Besides the choice of Dr Edu, whose eligibility for a ministerial position was her role as the Women Leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress in the election of Mr. Tinubu, the president’s handling of the school feeding programme is also lacking in foresight. The government placed the cart before the horse in this matter. Recall that earlier in December, Tinubu ordered the reintroduction of the school feeding programme that his predecessor suspended. It is the same school feeding scheme that the Buhari-led administration spent N200 billion on, in about five years, but without a significant improvement in the rate of enrolment and malnutrition affecting 42 per cent of schoolchildren in the country and responsible for 49 per cent absenteeism of primary school-age children. To have rewarded the cesspit of corruption with more votes is uncharacteristic of a government that is serious about tackling corruption or endemic poverty.

Pleasingly, it is clearer to Tinubu that the habit of throwing public funds at problems without any clear plans, transparency and accountability measures is not a poverty alleviation strategy. The exigency of the current realities demands that the government comprehensively review the entire intervention programmes of its predecessor to purge the system and learn valuable lessons on how to credibly give interventions to the poor.

The Buhari-led administration, as part of its scorecard, said it invested the sum of N1.3 trillion to improve the lives of vulnerable Nigerians through its NSIPA in the last seven years. Farouq disclosed that N890.7 billion was spent on N-power with N246 billion on CCT, and N17.6 billion on GEEP, while the school feeding programme gulped N200.9 billion. In total, about 15 million lives were estimated to have been touched. The question is: where are these beneficiaries and to what end have they been impacted? Irrespective of what becomes of EFCC’s probe, what is clear is that at least N44 billion has been misappropriated and missing. That is a lot from one ministry and one requiring a total overhaul.

Importantly, the Ministry of Humanitarian and Poverty Alleviation and the NSIPA are instructive to the socio-economic realities of today’s Nigeria. The 2022 national figures showed that 63 per cent of Nigerians are multidimensionally poor. In the last nine months of Tinubu-led administration and its harsh economic policies; more erstwhile middle-class Nigerians have crossed into the poverty bracket. The socio-economic outlook is dire nationwide. So, at no better time do the rising number of poor Nigerians need the social intervention programmes to get to them and truly lift them out of their misery.

It is good that Tinubu has assured that his administration remains committed to a swift and unbiased process that would ensure that the social intervention programmes work exactly as intended, to the benefit of the most vulnerable Nigerians. However, the process should neither exceed the six-week timeline nor take forever. Having N100 billion worth of intervention programmes in the 2024 budget locked away from both the thieving political class and the people, who need them to survive, is not a problem-solving strategy. Rather, Tinubu should demand that the ministerial panel handling the investigation accelerate the review of the NSIPA to get the programmes back on the right track. Government is all about solving problems and this should not be an exception.