WHY BUHARI'S SOCIAL WELFARE SCHEMES ARE MAKING NIGERIANS POORER 

In few weeks to the end of his second tenure as 15th President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari is said to have made a request to the National Assembly for the approval to borrow the sum of USD800 million from the World Bank for the Federal Government's National Social Safety Net Programme.

According to the Safer World Foundation, "The National Social Safety Nets Project is part of government’s policy of growth and social inclusion aimed at addressing poverty, which is one of the social challenges facing Nigeria. With support from the World Bank, the project seeks to, among other components, support targeted/selected poor households with monthly cash transfers. This is with the hope of laying foundation for the government’s long-term objectives of targeting and delivering safety nets to poor and vulnerable households across the nation."

Recall also that the administration of President Buhari had also engaged through the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) on various social welfare schemes such as the N-Power, the Conditional Cash Transfer, the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Program (GEEP), and the National Home Grown School Feeding Program (NHGSFP). All of these interventions were created to address poverty and help increase economic development.

As published in The Guardian Nigeria, as of February 2023, according to the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq, over N1.358 trillion have so far been spent in various programmes under the NSIP since 2016, with the minister further claiming that over 15 million lives have been impacted since inception of the ministry, while the number of people below the poverty line has dropped since the Buhari government assumed power. 

On a state level, in Niger State alone, not less than N10 billion was spent under the NSIP with 710,000 beneficiaries since the beginning of the programme in 2016, according to the Niger State Focal Person of NSIP, Amina Musa Gua in a report published on Daily Trust on March 2023. Specifically, she said 560,000 pupils were being fed under the NHGSFP, while 15,000 people were engaged as food vendors and suppliers. Another 23,000 people were enlisted into the N-Power, while 81,000 others benefitted from the Conditional Cash Transfer.

Sadly, there are indications that the Federal Government's welfare programmes initiated to reduce poverty have failed to bear the desired result. For instance, in 2019, four years after the NSIP began, the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported that 40.1 per cent of the total population were classified as poor. In other words, an average four out of 10 individuals in Nigeria had real per capita expenditures below N137,430 per year, translating into over 82.9 million Nigerians who were considered poor by national standard. This report led stakeholders to lament that NSIP has not achieved much to tackle poverty and despondency.

Fast forward to October 4, 2022, the Nasarawa State governor, Abdullahi Sule, was quoted to have said that 349 ‘ghost’ schools were included in the Federal Government’s feeding programme. Earlier, a nongovernmental organisation, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) had invited the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development to a public debate for her to give an account of her stewardship with claims that "the ministry of humanitarian affairs may have fed ghosts and claimed to have fed real children." She refused to honour the invitation.

But are the social welfare initiatives achieving the desired results as claimed by the minister? Again, three years after the NBS 2019 report, it released an highlights of the 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) survey, an index that captures the percentage of households in a country deprived along three dimensions of well-being (monetary poverty, education, and basic infrastructure services) to provide a more complete picture of poverty.

The NBS in its report revealed that: 63% of persons living within Nigeria (133 million people) are multidimensionally poor. The National MPI is 0.257, indicating that poor people in Nigeria experience just over one-quarter of all possible deprivations. 65% of the poor (86 million people) live in the North, while 35% (nearly 47 million) live in the South. Poverty levels across States vary significantly, with the incidence of multidimensional poverty ranging from a low of 27% in Ondo to a high of 91% in Sokoto. Over half of the population of Nigeria are multidimensionally poor and cook with dung, wood or charcoal, rather than cleaner energy. High deprivations are also apparent nationally in sanitation, time to healthcare, food insecurity, and housing.

In general, the incidence of monetary poverty is lower than the incidence of multidimensional poverty across most states. In Nigeria, 40.1% of people are poor according to the 2018/19 national monetary poverty line, and 63% are multidimensionally poor according to the National MPI 2022. Multidimensional poverty is higher in rural areas, where 72% of people are poor, compared to 42% of people in urban areas.

From PENGlobal's viewpoint, the Buhari administration got it all wrong in its plans toward reducing poverty. A major cause of poverty is unemployment, which is high in Nigeria. According to the KPMG, in a publication in The Punch on April 11, 2023, Nigerian unemployment rate had increased to 37.7 per cent in 2022 and will further rise to 40.6 per cent, due to the continuing inflow of job seekers into the job market. 

Most of the social welfare initiatives, though crafted with good intentions, have opened opportunities to diversion of public funds, further fueling corruption for a government that came to power with the promise to fight the scourge. Nigeria is a fantastically corrupt country, and so any given opportunity is often exploited by the majority because corrupt practices have become a norm rather than an abnormal behaviour, having been with Nigerians for so long with no seriousness shown by relevant authorities toward addressing it.

The best way for any government to fight poverty is to first create an enabling environment, and by this I mean putting in place the necessary infrastructures that would encourage investments. It is investments that lead to job and wealth creation, not handouts of cash that makes people docile and dependent, inhibiting creativity or innovations. This mentality of giving free money or free feeding is what is destroying the economy of Nigeria and has stunted its growth over the almost eight years of the Buhari administration.

When government put in place required infrastructures, what it is doing is investing in its economy in the present for future growth. And what are these infrastructures? Power, to guarantee affordable access to electricity; transport networks, to allow free movement of resources including people in the air, land and on the sea; and of course, security, to boost safety of investments and give confidence to investors. These three areas of power, transport and security should be the focus of any serious administration that wants to turn the tide on poverty in Nigeria. Any other approach will always deliver a zero output.

Moreover, it is really pathetic that N1.358 trillion and more have been sunk in the fight against poverty with no positive results to show for it. It is also appalling that a government would choose the option of borrowing for consumption rather than for production. The Buhari's approach to borrowing makes absolutely no sense and is instead an abuse of power. That his administration, with few days to bow out of office, is still tinkling with the idea to add to the already bogus debt profile it had created is to us unpatriotic and steams irresponsibility. What do we call a father whose only inheritance to his children are debts and a mortgaged future?

By Abai Francis 

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