Conditional Cash Transfer

17^th April, 2020

By: Amir Abdulazeez

I

n 2001, the Nigerian Government created the ambitious National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP). The population then was estimated to be well above 120 million with over 63% of it living below one dollar per day which as at then exchanged for between 99 to 105 naira. NAPEP may not be declared a major success even if it fairly represented an improvement over previous attempts. A 2008 analysis on African Poverty reported that the programme was able to train about 130,000 youths while engaging 216,000 beneficiaries.

There were three main problems with NAPEP; its impact was too minimal considering the large population, there were widespread allegations that many of the beneficiaries were politically selected and hence not poor and thirdly, the programme was not organized to be sustainable. Since NAPEP, the Federal Government had initiated other cosmetic initiatives like YOUWIN, SURE-P empowerments, N-Power, etc directly and indirectly aimed at reducing poverty and unemployment. Equally, many state governments have invested heavily in vocational programmes. Since the APC government came in 2015, it has also introduced Conditional Cash Transfer where vulnerable Nigerians are paid N5,000 monthly.

Will this kind of initiatives end poverty in Nigeria? I believe, the major question we should be asking as Nigerians is not about the need to fight poverty, it should be about why do we have growing poverty? Should Nigeria have any significant business with poverty? Do the current and past leaders actually understand the level of poverty in the land as well as the right strategies to fight and defeat it? Are we fighting poverty from its roots or are we only selectively relieving its symptoms? Will conditional and even unconditional cash transfer reduce poverty significantly? What is the sustainable way of defeating poverty?

Times like this pandemic are the trying periods when all that have been said about Nigeria’s poverty which hitherto appear theoretical is now experienced in real and practical terms. The main clog in the wheel regarding fighting coronavirus in Nigeria is poverty. Locking down 200 million people, out of which about 50% or more are very poor can come with dire consequences. While many modestly developed and truly developing countries are concerned mainly with the micro-economic dimensions of this crisis, Nigeria is dealing with both the micro and the macro. In fact, the micro is more critical as this is the main reason why the government appear to be giving much priority to conditional cash transfer which it apparently lacks the capacity to execute intensively and extensively without macroeconomic consequences.

In 2017, Nigeria with 94.5 million extremely poor people representing 47.2% of the population, was declared the world’s poverty capital overtaking India with 70 million poor people or 5.1% of their population. Carried away with its ‘largest African economy’ status, the government instead of reflecting and getting back to work immediately, rather went on denial. Today, what the authorities denied verbally, they have been forced to accept practically as it is obvious that the government is facing more headache from the consequences of measures taken to fight Covid 19 than the actual disease itself.

For example, how do you ask a people you have deprived clean drinking water to wash their hands with running water frequently or a population in which a significant percentage are either homeless or semi-homeless to practice social distancing? It is evident therefore, ever since majority of Nigerians have been fighting with a bigger virus, much bigger than corona. How did we get here?

Just yesterday, the Daily Trust reported that the Nassarawa State Government spent over 500 million naira to procure ‘official’ vehicles for the state law makers. According to the paper, the 24 vehicles cost about 21 million naira each. This is happening amidst the coronavirus pandemic in which the state is reported to have no single government-owned ventilator which cost between 9 to 18 million. The picture on the paper’s story showed the Speaker of the State House Assembly and his crew shamelessly and satisfactorily inspecting the vehicles as they wore face masks that give the false impression of their concern towards the current predicament.

The Nassarawa story is a summary of how governments at all levels had been behaving towards poor Nigerians since 1999. The trillions of naira wasted on irrelevant priorities while peanuts are budgeted for the so-called poverty alleviation initiatives over the past 20 years is the major reason why majority of ordinary Nigerians are becoming poorer and poorer everyday.

Before 2017, I was of the habit of reviewing federal and state government yearly budgets; I even volunteered to translate some of them into local languages for the benefit of other readers. One general conclusion I reached was that majority of these budgets are mere recycled documents that will probably change nothing positively as far as development is concerned. As the representatives of the people, the legislature which supposed to vet these budgets and make them pro-poor end up making them more anti-people by manipulation, rubber stamping the corruption-motivated projects proposed by the executives and insertion of self-servicing fraudulent constituency projects.

If Nigeria is truly serious about alleviating poverty, it must take some solid, sincere and long-lasting measures against the cosmetic and rhetorical ones it keeps packaging regime after regime. First, it has to guarantee its citizens security at all cost. Insecurity is perhaps one of the biggest sources of poverty. Only God knows the amount of monies and sources of livelihood lost by poor and ordinary Nigerians to terrorism, armed robbery, political thuggery, kidnapping, farmers-herders’ conflicts, religious riots and ethnic unrests over the last 20 years. Many have had permanent disabilities and lost the very health they can otherwise use to stay out of poverty.

Government must provide power at all as it is the most critical sector that has the potential of automatically creating and consolidating direct and indirect jobs. For example, if there is adequate security and power supply, industries will be revamped and businesses will run for 24 hours. When some people who conduct businesses during the day are asleep, some others who were resting during the day will conduct businesses during the night. Nigerian businesses will work for 24 hours with no valuable time to waste thereby hugely increasing productivity. When power is available, thousands of jobs would be created both directly and indirectly. The idea of banning the import generators is just a laughable way of diverting attention from government failures.

Massive and not cosmetic investment in agriculture is required. As at 2016, I counted about 109 major dams and reservoirs that can support irrigation but largely underutilized across the country. I want to believe they are much more than that.  A particular state with about 26 major and minor dams that cut across almost each Local Government are among those complaining of poverty. The governors have vandalized the state resources on white elephant projects that are not only useless in terms of revenue generation, but adds burden to state finances for their maintenance. A survey conducted revealed that a 4-billion-naira investment in the irrigation scheme will generate over 2 million jobs for poor people, but no, the governors prefer straight-forward projects in urban centres that come with high returns on kickbacks. Shameless and wicked.   

Government must re-establish peoples’ trust by ensuring equity and transparency. Over the years, virtually only rich sons and daughters can secure white collar jobs while the poor are left with crumbs or nothing. While lucrative opportunities are reserved for the rich to make them richer, palliatives like Npower are established for the poor to save face. With this, national resources are channelled towards making others richer, while the poor remain poorer. A poor university graduate that can secure a job with NCC, NNPC, CBN or FIRS can gradually pull the whole of his family out of poverty. But he can’t dare get such opportunities unless on rare occasions.

The Local Governments are major shock absorbers in terms of poverty reduction. For the past 10 years, everyone concerned had folded their arms and watched while the state governments have massacred them and rendered them useless through hijacking their responsibilities as well as withholding and siphoning their funds. Many of the states consume their resources and expend them on political projects that yield no financial dividend for the future. We hardly hear states investing in agriculture, industrialization and tourism.

The absence of a national development plan has given way to the politicization and inconsistencies of government activities at the federal and state levels. Government projects are not initiated along any short or long-term development plan but rather based on political sentiments. At the states, hardly, can you find a state with any long-term development plan which is continuous and consistent; even states that have been governed by one party since 1999 experience planning inconsistencies and policy summersaults. Right from 1999, if the states had made it an objective to truly eradicate poverty, many would’ve achieved significant progress by now.

Right now, Nigerians are part of the global community being held hostage by this pandemic. Many poor people are likely to be affected in high proportions. The post-pandemic period will likely come with additional economic challenges. After all these, we must return to fighting against our main virus which is the poverty that was artificially imposed on us by people who called themselves our leaders.

It is unfortunate that we have reached a level where we cannot get the most basic things right in this country and nobody is held responsible. At different levels, we are governed by heartless leaders who can maim and kill their own people with impunity to stay in power while the constitution grants them immunity. In our country, truth has been reduced to a mere opinion. Under these conditions, it is only a matter of time that every Nigerian become vulnerable and then eligible for conditional cash transfer.

Twitter: @AmirAbdulazeez