Focus on the Social Investment Programme in Nigeria

Thursday, November 29,2018 08:35AM / Nifemi TAIYESE of Proshare WebTV

Mrs. Maryam Uwais,Senior Special Adviser to the President on Social Investments in arecent interview with Proshare WebTV, explained the role of theFederal Government in ensuring the success of the on-going social investmentprogramme in Nigeria.

According to her there are four broad programmes underwhich the social investment scheme is being executed, namely;

· Home GrownSchool Feeding Programme (HGSF)

· GovernmentEnterprise Empowerment Programme (GEEP).

· N-PowerInitiative

· NationalSocial Safety Net Programme for the Vulnerable Households

She made mention of the empower programme, and saidthat the programme is responsible for ensuring that young graduates who areunemployed have the opportunity to get recruited through enlisting for theempowerment programme. She attested that the program is responsible for therecruitment of 500,000 graduates already.

The recruits are now working in every local governmentin this country at health centres, farms and also showing support in manyareas.

However, she stressed The President and the Vice Presidentmade efforts to ensure that it is a free and fair process and withoutpartiality, favouritism or nepotism by insisting that list should not be takenfrom anyone.

Adequate provision is also made for non-graduates as20,000 non-graduates are currently in the field who have been trained onaudited skill centres. Equipment have been given to them to assist in theexecution of their work, she said.

She spoke on the school feeding programme that ispresently in almost 50,000 schools in 26 states. Speaking affirmatively, Uwaissaid about 4 more states would be on board by the end of the term.

Through the process payment is being made directly andwithout the middle man.

The importance of Agriculture for her cannot beoveremphasized, because over 9 million children are being fed and they arebeing fed with food that is grown around them.

This means 6.8 million eggs every week because thechildren under this programme are being given an egg every week, 594 cows, 83metric tons of fish. Rice, Vegetables, Maize, Onion, Soya-bean and other fooditems inclusive stimulates a lot of productivity for our farmers, whileensuring sustainable income.

According to her, there is a cash transfer programme,and it is a community owned process. The people that can access this fund arenot randomly selected but are selected by the community. This process isdeliberate because they are going round the country.

However, she further stated that people are beingtrained in the various civil service sectors, the ministry and local governmentto either become trainers or to be informed on how to conduct Focus GroupDiscussion (FGD) in order for proper selection to be made.

She acknowledged the present leadership for givingadequate attention to women and widows in this programme.

Conclusively, she said the program is facing manychallenges and that this challenges are being addressed. The organisers are nowgetting feedback that they can’t get sitting in a place and it is considered agood sign.

Speaking further Mryam Uwais noted that they wereleveraging on a lot of capacity at federal levels such as the DSS givingregular reports from the field, NOA assisting with verification, and CivilDefence Protection of our women.

The way forward she said is to be cost effective inorder for the states to create an institution that can be used for alleviationof poverty in a concerted manner.

“Looking at the situation of things, social investmenthas been neglected for way too long and this on-going programme needs to bemonitored properly so that it can be sustained”- Mrs Uwais said.