The leadership of the National Assembly Tuesday, faulted the way the Social Investment Programme of the Federal Government (SIP), is being implemented and called for an enabling legislation in line with global best practices.
The President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, made their reservations about the scheme at a meeting held with the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajia Sadiya Umar Farouq, and some top officials of the Ministry.
They made it abundantly clear that the Social Investment Programme which was established in 2016 under the Presidency but which is now under the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs needed a reform to make it more efficient and effective.
In his opening remarks, Lawan said the National Assembly was very much interested in the current Intervention initiatives of the ministry, particularly with respect to the disbursement aimed at assuaging the plight of the poorest of the poor Nigerians against COVID-19.
“We feel that we need to work together with you to ensure that there is effectiveness, there is efficiency, that those who are supposed to benefit, benefit directly,” he said.
He added that the National Assembly is concerned about the conditions and guidelines for the intervention programmes which are specifically directed at the most vulnerable Nigerians.
He picked holes in the implementation of the programme by condemning the practice of making those to benefit from the programme to go online and have BVN, saying, “majority of those who are supposed to benefit have no access to power. They have no access to Internet. They have no bank account and no BVN.
“Infact, many of them don’t even have phones and these are the poorest of the poor. Yet, some of the conditions or guidelines which you set inadvertently leave them out.”
Consequently according to him, the poorest of the poor have not been sufficiently captured by the programme.
He however solicited for synergy between the executive and the National Assembly on how to make the programme beneficial to the poorest at this critical time of lockdown over COVID 19.
“Now with Coronavirus, they need our attention more than ever before. The time has come that we review the ways and manner we use to deliver the services under the SIP to Nigerians.
“We need to be better in terms of strategy for delivery and definitely, what we have been doing in the past cannot deliver exactly what will solve the challenges of the most ordinary and most vulnerable Nigerians”, he said .
Speaking in the same vein, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Gbajabiamila told the minister that she is right now in the eye of the storm because all eyes are on her.
“Your job right now, is probably the most important as we speak, because you are saddled with the responsibility of alleviating ‘poverty’ or the hardship, due to no fault of anyone, being thrust upon Nigerians, and I know that you came into a system, or you met a system that has nothing to do with you, but what we will be asking you to do is for you to change that system.
“When you walk into a system, no system is 100 perfect. The word reform is something we use all the time, and this is the one time when that word reform must be used in the truest sense of that word.
“The questions are going to be asked, how do you come about your list, how comprehensive is your distribution list? What are the parameters? What is the geographical spread? So these are tough questions that are going to be asked but I want you to look at them as frank questions that we need to ask.
“If you really want to define the meaning of representation, if that was being practiced in the real meaning of representation, then we shouldn’t be here. Because all the questions we want to ask, we should already have the answers. We should be providing those answers to the Nigerian people we represent.
“But if they ask me, as the speaker of the House, or ask the Senate President or any of my colleagues here, we are going to be struggling for answers which is not good “, he said .
According to him, ” Nigeria’s SIP is similar to the Unemployment Insurance Act in the UK and the Social Security Act in the US.
“There is a lot of take away from this COVID-19. One of them is the International best practices. My point is that these things are backed by law. They are codified by the legislature so that these issues and these questions will not arise,” he said.
He therefore urged the minister to talk with the relevant Committees and the National Assembly leadership on the best way to codify the scheme.
In her response, the minister said the SIP was moved to her ministry for “sustainability and institutionalisation,”
“I am very pleased to hear that we are going to work together to see that we give a legal backing to this programme because that is the only way to go,” she said.
