The Federal Government has said it spent about N300 billion on the National Social Investment Programmes in the last three years.
This was disclosed by the Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on National Social Welfare Programme, Maryam Uwais on Tuesday in Abuja when the Senate and House Committees on Poverty Alleviation came on a joint oversight visit.
She also disclosed that the programme has 11.5 million beneficiaries and nine million indirect beneficiaries even as she lamented the lack of adequate funding to run the programmes of her office
The delegation was led by the Chairmen of the committees in the two chambers, Sen. Lawal Gumau and Mohammed Wudil who said the visit was to help the committees in making knowledgeable decisions concerning budgetary allocations to the programmes as proposed in the 2019 budget.
She said: “So far we have over 11.5 million direct beneficiaries on all our programmes. We also have about nine million indirect beneficiaries.
“Right now we have over 700,000 people on the National Social Register but the people we are paying under the Conditional Cash Transfer Scheme are about 300,000.
“This is because we select only the poorest of the poor in every community and every payment is done through their bank account, so we are able to track every kobo spent.’’
The Presidential aide also told the legislators that the feeding programme was currently feeding over 9.5 million pupils in 30 states while empowering 101,000 cooks.
“We are feeding over 9.5 million children in about 56,000 schools around the country. The value chain in the school feeding programme is just amazing.
“Not only are the children coming back to school, we are seeing that they are more alert in class and absolutely happy to come to school.
“We are also seeing that farmers are smiling to the banks. This is because we need at least seven million eggs every week, over 600 cattle, 83 metric tonnes of fish and lots of fruits and vegetables,’’ she said.
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On the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme, GEEP, Uwais said the federal government was providing financial support to businesses at the bottom of the financial pyramid.
“Tradermoni was created specifically for petty traders and artisans across Nigeria. With Tradermoni, you can receive interest-free loan starting from N10,000 and growing all the way to N100,000 as you pay back,’’ she said.
Other programmes of GEEP, she mentioned include Farmermoni, and Marketmoni.
On the challenges in the delivery of social benefits, Uwais said that adequate funding remained a major setback.
“We don’t get our full funding. Only about 25 per cent of our funds have been released, so we have to find ways and means to be cost effective about our spending,’’ she said.
Uwais said the National Social Investment Office was currently leveraging on other agencies like the Central Bank of Nigeria, Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System, and the National Bureau of Statistics to carry out its mandate.
She commended the World Bank for the grant given to the office for Conditional Cash Transfers, and also ActionAid for its role in monitoring and evaluation of all the social investment programmes.
