Ordinarily, the Nigerian government would not be doling out cash gifts to its citizens, especially when cash is not easy to come by. But we are in unusual times when poverty, worsened by rising inflation occasioned by the global economic meltdown, has been inexorably degrading the earning abilities of the ordinary person. People are no longer searching for comfort and luxury but the means to survival. As the situation worsens, it is only understandable that women and children – the traditional victims of social exclusion – are the worst hit. Around the country, poverty has impacted households so much so that some of them look like internally displaced persons (IDP) camps.
Of course, the situation did not begin with the coming of the Buhari administration in 2015. It is the culmination of decades of decay and lack of purposive strategy. The current government inherited the mess and then got its hands burnt by the economic meltdown that greeted it on arrival.
The government, early in the day, saw that fighting poverty is as much a priority as fulfilling one of its campaign promises, i.e. fighting corruption. Therefore, it initiated the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) as a strategy for enhancing social inclusion. Under this initiative, a number of projects have been conceived and introduced with the aim of addressing the pressing concerns of the most vulnerable persons in the society. They include the Conditional Cash Transfer, Home Grown School Feeding, Special Grant Transfer, Public Workfare and Skills for Jobs under the Youth Employment and Social Support Operations, as well as the Special Cash Grant for Rural Women.
Under one of these, the Conditional Cash Transfer, for example, poor households that are mined from the National Social Register receive N10,000 bi-monthly. For instance, 26,004 households in Plateau State were receiving such payments while 47,000 were on a waiting list as at December 1, 2020. Recently in Jos, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajiya Sadiya Umar Farouq, together with the Minister of Women Affairs, Dame Pauline Tallen, distributed assorted grains from the National Food Reserve as palliative to vulnerable persons affected by the restriction of movement to curtail the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. They included 71 trailer-loads of maize, sorghum and millet to cater to 294,199 households.
No past Nigerian government came up with such a large-scale initiative to wrestle and throw poverty. The current administration, led by President Muhammadu Buhari, envisions that implementing these programmes would help lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty within 10 years.
Let us reflect on just one of them and see how it will actualise the social inclusion agenda of the government: the Special Cash Grant for Rural Women. This programme is aimed at benefiting over 150,000 poor rural women in the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). It was launched in Jos on October 16, 2020 to mark the International Day of Rural Women whose theme was aptly titled “Building Rural Women’s Resilience in the Wake of COVID-19”.
Under the programme, 200 women each out of the 774 Local Government Areas in the country will each receive a one-off payment of N20,000. The idea is to assist her in starting a petty business or improve an existing one. It is believed that a judicious use of the money will help improve the living standard of not only the woman herself but also her family in terms of food security and job-creation. The multiplier effect of the programme can be seen in the prophetic saying that when you educate a woman you have educated the society; as such when you have lifted a woman out of poverty, you have lifted her family out of poverty as well.
Hajiya Sadiya Umar Farouq, under whose purview the various SIPs are being executed, enumerated the benefits of the programme during its launch in Jos, saying, “The grant is expected to increase access to financial capital required for economic activities. It is our hope that the beneficiaries of this programme will make good use of the opportunity to increase their income, enhance their food security and generally contribute towards improving their living standard.”
It is this message that she amplifies during the launch of the programme in every state that she visits: Zamfara, Ondo, Ebonyi, Gombe, Bauchi, etc. She believes, and rightly so, that the programme will clear the path for the rural women to transit from poverty to prosperity if they use the fund judiciously. The outcome would be the fulfillment of President Buhari’s onerous vision of taking 100 million Nigerians out of poverty by the year 2030.
So far, this life-saving initiative has been launched in many states in the north and in the south, and the minister has been untiring in seeing its take-off in one state capital after the other. In Zamfara, Ebonyi, Ondo, and Bauchi, 200 women have so far benefited in each of the 14, 13, 13 and 20 Local Government Areas (LGAs) respectively. In Zamfara, 2,800 women have been affected while in Bauchi State, more than 4,000 women have received the one-off payment of N20,000 each.
As the initiative takes off in the remaining states, more and more vulnerable women will be reached. The multiplier effect can only be imagined. It is universally acknowledged that women are good with money; they will not waste the grant on frivolities like parties, clothes, drinks or gambling as their male counterparts might do. As the Governor of Ebonyi State, Engr. David Umahi, observed during the state launch of the programme: “Women are very hard working. If men were the ones who got this money, they would have taken wives the next morning. Women don’t dictate to their husbands, but they determine that food is in the house.”
One good thing about this programme is its transparency of execution. There are no any underhand tactics, or wuru-wuru in Nigerian parlance, involved. The programme is being executed by the Humanitarian Affairs ministry in conjunction with the various stakeholders such as the state and local governments. There are no go-betweens or agents as the beneficiaries are handed their cash directly. A visit to any of the disbursement venues would assure a casual observed about the good faith behind the programme and the way it touches lives as the smiles radiate on the faces of the women, who are full of praise for the government for coming to their aid in this period of general despondency.
The state governments also do appreciate the Federal Government’s gesture because it is giving them a much sought after relief by helping their own locals. When the initiative was launched in Bauchi, the Chief of Staff to the state governor, Malam Ladan Salihu, was reported saying enthusiastically, “I am convinced that this programme will achieve the desired objectives with the kind of beneficiaries that I have seen in Bauchi State. Let me tell you about one thing that I have taken away from this programme. I was carrying out a routine check before the Honourable Minister arrived. There were more than 1,200 women waiting, and outside I saw more than 50 other women who were not ordinarily registered or captured. I said they should just be given a chance to walk in. Some of the women were crippled and some with all forms of disabilities, and they were allowed in. To my pleasant surprise, when I came in, I saw the same number of people that I saw outside. They were admitted, their names were taken and they have now become beneficiaries.”
Salihu, a key official in the government of an “opposition state”, added: “I want to congratulate His Excellency Mr. President, Muhammadu Buhari, and to salute the Honourable Minister, Sadiya Umar Farouq, for this very important life-saving, life-touching and life-enhancing project.”
It is important to note that aside from the Cash Grant for Rural Women, no fewer than 78,000 women have benefited from the various Social Intervention Programmes of the Federal Government in Bauchi State alone. Hence the effusive commendation.
Likewise, Governor Simon Bako Lalong had this to say about the programme: “This will go a long way in improving the lives of women and children in Plateau State, particularly their health and economic empowerment,” while Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo said: “The people of Ondo State appreciate the Federal Government for all these social investment initiatives that have transformed the lives of rural women in our state. Many of these women have transited from poverty to relative prosperity. They run their businesses now with the most probable potential for expansion. The Ondo State government is highly delighted for the initiative of empowering rural women as a social inclusion and poverty reduction agendum.”
As one official observed, it is important that the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development devise a monitoring system in order to ensure that the fund is utilised by the rural women for the purpose that it was given to them. Since it is not money for medicine, food or owambe, the beneficiaries can be tracked through their registration and be properly guided on the fund utilisation. Since the ultimate target is poverty reduction, officials would do better to ensure that the President’s vision is achieved. This can only be assured by going beyond the cash disbursement.
No doubt, many state governments would want to see more of this initiative coming to their domains because of its potentialities. They have already started agitating, with Governor Umahi of Ebonyi saying: “We are appreciative and we will continue to ask for more.”
I am sure more will come from Sadiya Umar Farouq and the Federal Government. You bet.
Sheme, a former Editor of Blueprint, writes from Abuja
