Federal Government’s Grand Social Intervention Scheme to be Phased

 The social intervention programme of the federal government, for which about half a trillion naira has been proposed in the 2016 budget will not be a one-off scheme, with work commencing in earnest in the presidency to implement the scheme, the media aide to the vice-president, Mr. Laolu Akande, has said.

In a statement he issued yesterday in Abuja on behalf of Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, Akande said the scheme would involve a combination of several well thought out programmes emphasising direct connections with the extremely poor and the needy, among other categories in the country.

According to him, the plan by the Muhammadu Buhari administration is not only comprehensive but has taken care of some of the factors that led to the failure of previous poverty alleviation schemes.
He said: “One of the major difference here is that the social intervention programme such as the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) would be a direct transfer of N5,000 monthly to the extremely poor among us. And this is a safety net that several advanced nations have put in place for a long time, more often in times of economic downturns.”

According to him, money would be paid directly to the people concerned on the condition of school enrolment and immunisation.
He said: “With this, we will expand school enrolment and also achieve physical well being.”He explained that the school feeding programme, which is another aspect of the social intervention programme, would be entirely homegrown, unlike previous federal government plans which relied on foreign inputs.

He said the homegrown school feeding programme would commence in public primary schools in the new year providing adequate nutrition to school children, would promote local farming, boost agriculture and create jobs and wealth locally.

“We have experts working in the presidency collaborating with experts from global bodies who will bring to bear international best practices to work on how best to implement these programmes,” he explained.

Akande added that with the social intervention programme, no fewer than one million jobs, comprising 500,000 graduate-youths to be engaged as teachers and another 500,000 non-graduate unemployed people who would be trained as artisans, would be created in 2016.

“As the president disclosed during the budget speech, he has asked the vice-president to coordinate the programme and I can tell you that serious work is already apace,” Akande added.

He reiterated that for the first time in Nigeria’s budgetary history, the federal government would be directly intervening in lifting people out of poverty through a series of measures under the social intervention scheme.

“Through these measures and for the first time, the budget is paying attention to the problem of poverty in a proper and direct way,” he stated.

Akande said another one million extremely poor and disabled Nigerians would also benefit from the first phase of the CCT scheme proposed in the 2016 Appropriation Bill.

“There will also be provisions for affordable, very low cost loans to market women and artisans to enable them enlarge and expand their businesses,” he added.