PRESIDENT BUHARI’S SAFETY NET

The N5000 planned monthly stipend for the unemployed is a good initiative. But it should be tied to productive ventures

After initial disputations over an electioneering promise, President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration has indicated that it would begin the payment of N5, 000 stipend to a category of disadvantaged Nigerians nationwide by 2016. The social welfare programme which targets an estimated 25 million Nigerians caught in the unemployment and poverty net, would cost the federal government N1.5 trillion annually.

Against the background of the parlous state of the country’s economy, it is difficult to fault the thinking behind the initiative. According to the National Bureau of Statistics figures, an estimated 73.4 million able-bodied Nigerians were without jobs in the first quarter of the year. This is indeed a recipe for disaster. A significant number are graduates of tertiary institutions, many of whom left school some years back.

With this large segment of the population roaming the streets without any means of livelihood and hope for the next meal, it should be little wonder why the social tension in the country has reached a boiling point, taking several forms, including violent agitations across the nation. Providing a palliative of this nature offers subsistence and hope for a significant number of the unemployed, thereby reducing the tendency towards crime and other anti-social activities.

Safety net as a social welfare policy aimed at alleviating and reducing poverty in the society is not a novel one. It is a series of deliberate actions by the state to protect a critical segment of the society from the vagaries of poverty and empower them to pull out of it.

Past administrations in Nigeria had attempted this policy. President Olusegun Obasanjo, for instance, in 2001 instituted the National Poverty Eradication and Empowerment Programme

THE BUHARI ADMINISTRATION MUST REVIEW THE SUBSISTING POVERTY REDUCTION POLICIES WITHIN NIGERIA AND ELSEWHERE, AND DESIGN A STRATEGY THAT WOULD STEER THE NATION AWAY FROM THE PITFALLS OF THE PAST

(NAPEP). It was a shift in the previous focus as the Obasanjo programme sought a reduction of poverty through vocational training for the youth; support for internship and micro-credit; and creation of jobs in the automobile industry. An analysis done seven years later showed that about 130,000 youths had been trained and another 260,000 engaged.

Although the programme continued under the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and the Goodluck Jonathan presidency, the policy of partial deregulation of the downstream sector of the oil industry in January 2012 forced President Jonathan to institute additional poverty-reduction policy measures encapsulated in the Subsidy Re-investment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) which sought to plough back the monetary gains from the deregulation policy to social services that would reduce the effect of the policy on the poor.

That 110 million Nigerians still live below poverty line today is monument to the abysmal failure of these poverty reduction policies of the past. The reasons for this would be many, but principal among them is the corruption in the implementation process. Subsequently, the benefits of the programmes did not get to the targeted beneficiaries as loyalists of the ruling political party who were well above the poverty line cornered the proceeds of the programmes.

Going forward, the Buhari administration must therefore review the subsisting poverty reduction policies within Nigeria and elsewhere, and design a strategy that would steer the nation away from the pitfalls of the past. Government’s fresh strategy must include clear parameters for ascertaining and determining the number of beneficiaries, guarantees against abuse, and sustainable source of funding. There must be better targeting of beneficiaries and better monitoring and supervision of the programme.

More importantly, the principal objective of the scheme should be to, on an incremental basis, take people out of poverty, and not to alleviate their poverty. For as the experience of some of the developed countries have shown, such a policy tends to encourage indolence. Our case must be different. Our strategy must be to wipe out poverty within a time frame. If the administration is serious and it can find the money, it is not altogether a bad idea.