According to Hajia Sadiya Umar Farouq, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management, and Social Development, the federal government presently provides monthly cash gifts of N5,000 to 1, 940 004 disadvantaged Nigerians.
Farouq said the National Social Investment (Establishment) Bill will provide a statutory and institutional framework for the implementation of the National Social Investment Programme, or NSIP, during a one-day stakeholders’ retreat on the bill on Thursday in Abuja, which was organised by the Senate Committee on Social Duties.
The minister explained that the NSIP was established by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2016 to address social and economic inequities and reduce poverty among Nigerians. The minister was represented at the event by the Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Dr. Nasir Sani Gwarzo.
She claims that there are four social support programmes designed to give the most vulnerable and impoverished Nigerians the tools they need to raise their standard of living.
With its four cluster programmes, the NSIP, according to Farouq, affects the lives of underprivileged Nigerians both directly and indirectly.
She included the Government Entrepreneurship and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP), and the Conditioner Cash Transfer Programme (CCTP) as examples.
The minister emphasised that the programmes were made to act as different kinds of social safety nets, notably for individuals at the bottom of the social ladder who need help in order to become contributing members of society and stop additional people from slipping into poverty.
“The NSIP can be used to achieve a broad range of sustainable development goals, including poverty reduction, education, health, social inclusion, and empowerment,” she stated.
According to Section 17(3) of the Constitution, the State is required to direct its policies towards ensuring that all of its citizens, without exception, have the opportunity to secure adequate means of subsistence and that, among other things, provisions are made for public assistance in meritorious cases of need.
Legislation supports all forms of contributory social protection, including pension plans, health insurance, and social insurance. The National Health Insurance Authority Act, the Pension Reform Act, and The Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund Act are the relevant laws.
The lack of legal support for the NSIP, a non-contributory social protection programme, highlights the necessity for it to also have a piece of legislation,”
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She stated: “Since the commencement of the NSIP in 2015, 500,000 additional youngsters are currently receiving various trainings under the initiative as approved by the President, and one million youths have been empowered through the N-Power Programme.
“The National Beneficiary Registration now includes 1,975,381 poor and vulnerable households from the National Social Register. In the 36 federated states, there are 9, 841, 700 households that belong to the NBR alone.
She affirmed that the Cash Transfer programme helps the weak and poor increase their consumption and learn how to save money in order to lessen poverty and increases their resilience so they can resist shocks.
She confirmed that 1, 940, 004 people in total were currently getting cash transfers on a monthly basis.
In a similar spirit, she claimed that as a result of the National Home Grown School Food Programme, public elementary schools all around the nation “had witnessed an unprecedented amount of new enrollment.”
She said that the initiative is “now feeding 10 million students in more than 66, 000 public schools across Nigeria” and “gradually lowering cases of out-of-school children nationally.”
The beneficiary count for GEEP loans currently stands at 2,653,333 across three categories, including Trader Moni, Market Moni, and Farmer Moni.
“Throughout the country, 1, 142, 783 people have registered to get benefits from the second phase of GEEP under the three loan programmes.”
Senator Yusuf Abubakar Yusuf (APC, Taraba Central), the chairman of the Senate panel, explained that the retreat was intended to bring together important stakeholders from the executive branch of government so that they could be on equal footing with the legislature regarding the proposed legislation.
“Information is a crucial tool in the development of legislation. We invited important stakeholders from the ministry and other agencies to provide the committee with crucial information so they could come up with strong legislation for the NSIP creation since government policies are derived from laws, the official said.
