ISSUES IN SOCIAL INVESTMENT PROGRAMMES

Government should do more to make the safety nets impactful

Despite several intervention measures to cushion vulnerable families, the impact remains negligible, largely because too few households are covered amid poor funding, and leaks to non-poor beneficiaries. The World Bank in its latest report titled, ‘The State of Social Safety Nets in Nigeria’, noted that 56 per cent of beneficiaries of government safety net programmes are poor, yet only 44 per cent of the total benefits actually reach poor households. “Nigeria’s safety nets, at their current funding level and implementation pattern, are too small, too narrow, and too diluted to meaningfully reduce extreme poverty,” according to the report.

To make the programmes impactful, the world foremost financial institution suggests increased overall spending on safety nets, expansion of the coverage to reach more of the 100 million extreme poor Nigerians in addition to raising the benefits significantly from the current N5000 to a N20,000 monthly cash-transfer. This, it stated could lift up to 13.9 million people out of poverty, arguing that the programme be treated as a crucial investment rather than a temporary palliative.

For years, various administrations have been making efforts to strengthen Nigeria’s social protection system and reduce the acute level of poverty across the country. In 2016, the federal government established the National Social Investment Programmes (NSIP) to tackle poverty and hunger across the country. The programmes under the NSIP focus on ensuring a more equitable distribution of resources to vulnerable populations, including children, youth and women. The Household Uplifting Programme (HUP), which has the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) as its flagship intervention, is designed to provide targeted financial transfers to poor households under an expanded national social safety nets system. Those enrolled in the programme benefit from monthly grants of N5,000 to aid consumption, and ensure survival in the household.

As of April 2023, the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning estimated that the national social register had about 50 million beneficiaries, representing 38 per cent of the 133 million Nigerians that were multidimensionally poor as of 2022. However, while the population is on the increase, the number on the list is decreasing. As it is, many people are left behind, perhaps partly accounting for high insecurity in the country. Meanwhile, the programmes have been criticised for making little or no difference in the life of the people they are meant to impact. Indeed, despite the poor attention to social protection services, many have accused those implementing the programmes of not being transparent, and of diverting some of the resources to personal use.

Last week, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Bernard Doro said the federal government was strengthening Nigeria’s social protection, under the renewed hope agenda programmes such as Conditional Cash Transfers, the Grant for Vulnerable Groups, N-Power, GEEP, Home-Grown School Feeding, and the National Social Safety-Net Coordination. “Over 19.7 million households are verified in the national social register,” he said “with 5.5 million benefiting from cash transfers. Microcredit schemes have also reached more than 5 million Nigerians across all local government areas.”

In addition, the ministry recently completed the Skill-to-Wealth Programme, which trained unemployed youths in solar installation, greenhouse agriculture, and automobile engineering. Unfortunately, these are hardly making any dent on the prevalence of extreme poverty. Food is expensive. Nigeria is battling the highest prevalence of severe malnutrition in Africa, with about two million children being affected. Likewise, millions cannot afford to access healthcare. Clearly, the enormity of the task for addressing poverty and our human capital indices cannot be underestimated. But we also agree that the social interventions must be sustained and scaled up to make meaningful impact in the lives of the poor. It may reduce to cost of funding security.