#TrackNigeria -Over N13 billions of sleaze funds recovered from late dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha have been disbursed to 394,430 vulnerable people in 25 states across Nigeria as at May 2019. The Special Adviser to President Mohammadu Buhari on Social Investment, Mrs Maryam Uwais has said.
The bulk of the money was sourced from some of the loots recovered from former Head of State, the late Gen. Sani Abacha. This is apart from the N4billion from the IDA credit.
Mrs Uwais who spoke on ‘Utilisation of Recovered Assets for Public Good, Social Intervention Program in Focus’ at a conference on Agenda Setting for Citizens Interaction with Stolen Assets Recovery organized by the Human and Environmental Development Agenda, (HEDA) in Abuja said the implementation of the project has helped uplift millions of direct and indirect poor beneficiaries.
“The impact these Cash Transfers have made on improving household consumption and sustainable livelihoods cannot be over emphasized as most of the beneficiaries were living in extreme poverty. Children are going back to school, small trades and livelihoods are springing up; confidence and self-esteem slowly growing” Uwais said.
According to her, the impact of adopting social safety net programmes to address poverty has continued to facilitate economic growth in Africa (and many other developing countries), leading to buoyant commodity prices and better macroeconomic management.
“It is imperative that Nigeria also leverages on this initiative to wage war against poverty in our country. We all have a collective responsibility and role to play to promote socio-economic growth in our Nation. Nigeria is such a vast and diverse terrain, there are bound to be attempts at shortchanging the process or our beneficiaries. The majority of our beneficiaries are not exposed, literate or adept at financial transactions.
“At the very least, all of us can monitor and report grievances through the phone numbers provided in our call centre, or by escalating grievances, if any, through the numerous strands that have been established by the programme. We must all actively participate in the effort to enhance the conditions of our more marginalized citizens, depending on our skill sets, passion and empathy” she said.
She said part of the Abacha loot is being utilized to effect N10,000 bi-monthly transfers to cash transfer beneficiaries, through the operations of the National Social Investment Office operating from the Office of the Vice President.
Emphasizing what informed the government’s decision, Mrs. Uwais said that in December 2014, a Swiss Judge gave a Forfeiture Order to the effect that monies ($322.5m) recovered from the family of late General Sani Abacha would be returned to Nigeria, one of the conditions being that the World Bank would be involved in monitoring disbursements therefrom.
She said this was as a consequence to the opaqueness that surrounded the application of recovered funds prompting the World Bank to raise concerns some of which were who would bear the cost element of monitoring such disbursements and also the question of transparency.
“The World Bank, however, suggested, as a way out, that Nigeria could place the funds in existing World Bank projects, which meant that the pertinent structures would already have been established, thereby minimizing the monitoring costs. The list of World Bank projects was shared with the FGN, for the purpose”
She said after extensive deliberations, the FGN decided to place the funds in the cash transfer programme, since all the beneficiaries were being mined from a National Social Register being developed around each and every State and the FCT.
“The aim of dedicating National resources to improve the lives of citizens and strengthen the role of social protection in helping to distribute resources more broadly had always been a key strategy of this Administration. Social Protection (SP) interventions had been prioritized for reducing poverty and socio-economic vulnerabilities in the population, so the decision to align spending with the National Social Safety Net Project (NASSP) was deliberate.”
Uwais said the project has been structured to avoid political manipulations adding that only people with genuine and verifiable cases of extreme poverty were the direct beneficiaries.
She said the National Social Investment Office oversees four broad programmes, which are the Job Creation (comprising NPower and Technology Hubs), the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme, the Government Empowerment and Enterprise Programme (managed by BoI) and the National Social Safety Net Project (NASSP) led by the National Social Safety Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO).
The NASSCO oversees the social safety net programs that are World Bank-assisted; comprising the Youth Employment and Social Support Operation (YESSO), the Community and Social Development Project (CSDP) in Nigeria and the National Cash Transfer Office. NASSCO also supports the development of the National Social Register (NSR; consisting of the Social Registers in each State & the FCT), hosting the NSR in Abuja.
She said that at inception, Memorandum of Understanding, (MoUs) were signed with each State, to clarify the roles and responsibilities of Federal and State entities, which include the provision of an equipped office at State level, and the deployment of State civil servants that have the requisite skills.
“We review the CVS and approve of the staff, before we commence work. Poverty mapping is our next step; basically to identify 30% (then 50% and finally 20%) of the poorest LGAs in each Senatorial district. NASSCO subsequently trains the civil servants in the States and the LGAs in the community-based targeting (CBT) process, as well as on enumeration,” Uwais said adding that NASSCO provides the android devices, a vehicle and the wherewithal for the development of the State Registers, all of which are hosted in the Ministries of Planning of each State.
She said the first step of the CBT is the poverty mapping which identifies the poorest LGAs while the Community Based Targeting (CBT) is then conducted in an open and inclusive process, through homogenous focus group discussions, comprising of men and women
According to her, critics are understandably impatient especially because people are evidently suffering and the numbers are increasing every day, she observed that since the task is colossal, “we have taken considerable care in our first 3 years to establish a firm foundation, structure and mechanisms for States and communities to adopt. We are resolute about achieving results in an objective, transparent, cost-effective and efficient manner.”
