HUMANITARIAN MINISTRY: WHAT THE PROBE PANEL SHOULD DO

President Bola Tinubu has set up a six-person special presidential panel to reposition Nigeria’s social investment programme, with Wale Edun, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, as its leader. The panel’s mandate is to investigate, review and reposition the National Social Investment Agency’s (NSIPA) programmes, including the N-Power Programme, the Conditional Cash Transfer Programme, the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme, and the Home Grown School Feeding Programme. In essence, the panel is tasked to thoroughly review the operations of the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Social Welfare and recommend necessary reforms within the ministry and its agencies.

In just nine months of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration and in former President Muhammadu Buhari’s four years in his second term, events in the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation present two significant challenges for President Tinubu. Firstly, it will assess Tinubu’s government’s capacity to rectify past issues without generating political complications for its future.

Secondly, the actions and inaction of former minister Betta Edu will also assess President Tinubu’s ability to introduce innovative methods for effectively meeting the common Nigerians’ expectations regarding poverty alleviation, ensuring that funds reach their pockets and essential provisions reach their tables, seamlessly.

The primary challenge in the humanitarian ministry lies in its failure to effectively reach a minimum of 70% of its intended target population. A study published by the Journal of Policy and Development Studies on October 19, 2023, acknowledges the overall success of Nigeria’s social investment programme, according to stakeholders. However, it highlights significant hurdles, including insufficient funds, materials, and personnel, inadequate planning, delayed payments, corruption, and communication gaps. The study proposes implementing proper planning, ensuring adequate budget allocations, expanding the programme to other school categories, ensuring timely staff payments, and enhancing the recruitment process to enhance the programme’s performance.

Achieving a method to reach at least 70% of the poor and youth targeted by the National Social Investment Programme (NIPS) would signify a significant accomplishment for President Tinubu’s government, fulfilling 80% of its promises to Nigerians.

Since some of the programmes and schemes have not met people’s expectations and many of their managers have failed Nigerians, what recommendations and solutions should the Wale Edu-led probe panel present to the Tinubu government to salvage the situation? And what reforms do Nigerian social investment programmes need?

Firstly, the presidential panel should note that the direct methods of reaching the poor have failed the common man. The Tinubu government should opt for indirect methods by leveraging a well-known and respected hybrid public-private partnership. This involves engaging responsible private firms such as investment managers, fintechs, banks, and other local entities, along with the use of technology.

For instance, the country should be segmented into its 360 federal constituencies, with one to two firms assigned to each of the 360 segments. These firms should be mandated to create a robust and reliable database using people’s NIN, BVN, fingerprints, and phone numbers, including addresses, with emphasis on the specificity of each constituency and their local government areas’s peculiarities. 

With this approach, the government would establish a central unit, potentially managed by a consortium of private firms on behalf of the government. This method minimises embezzlement risks, allowing the government to concentrate on monitoring and ensuring good service delivery. The programme could even be designed so that private firms handle fund and essential items distribution while the government verifies and reimburses them.

Secondly, Nigeria’s social investment programmes should go beyond stipends, cash transfers, and palliatives; they should also touch on areas of the creation of small and medium enterprises (SME) for young people to manage and support farmers with farm inputs, including support to schools and students, especially in the area of assisting parents in the payment of school fees.

President Tinubu’s next Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management, and Social Development should be corruption-free and a new face. The man or woman should not merely be a minister but a technocrat with a robust professional track record—a great thinker akin to those in Silicon Valley, so to speak! Nigerians expect the new humanitarian minister to add significant value to the ministry, creating a system that will steer it away from its troubled past.

Zayyad I. Muhammad, Abuja, zaymohd@yahoo.com