FG’s Social Intervention Prog will not be politically influenced- Presidency

FG’s Social Investment Programmes will be free from all political interferences, Senior Special Adviser to the Vice President, Laolu Akande has said.

The Programmes which he said are a total of six different schemes would be evenly distributed across the nation and beneficiaries would be selected without bias or leanings to political favors.

Speaking to journalists, Tuesday, at the Presidential Villa Abuja, Akande said ” the President is the President for the entire nation, so we are not going to be doling out the responsibility of the people on partisan basis. Efforts are being made to ensure that we develop definite criteria”.

He listed the schemes to include: Teach Nigeria. Under this scheme half a million graduates that also include holders of the National College of Education (NCE) holders would be employed, trained and deployed to public schools. The federal government would pay for their trainings.

The Youth Empowerment Programme will make provision for young Nigerians who are not graduates. It would give them opportunity for vocational trainings. The training would be paid for by the government and the trainees would also receive stipends while undergoing training. They would be deployed to go and take care of their own lives because they have empowered, he said.

The other scheme is the Conditional Cash Transfer. This scheme is for Nigerians that are considered to be extremely poor and vulnerable. He disclosed that there are currently 110million of such people in the system and government would give N5,000 monthly to 1million of them this year. The beneficiaries would be sourced through social registers put together by different states. This programme already has the support of the World Bank, Akande said.

Home Grown School Feeding programme is also one of the scheme that the government intends to resuscitate using it’s social investment fund. This according to Akande would involve giving one decent meal a day to all public primary school pupils and will also drive enrollment in public schools as well as encourage local farming. FG would also collaborate with state governments.

Government also intends to grant scholarships in the range of to 100,000 students in tertiary institutions in the country studying in fields of Engineering, Mathematics and the Sciences.

A one off N60billion from the N500billion proposed for the the Social Investment Programmes will be used for soft loans the micro credit scheme. In addition to the over N200 billion from the Central Bank of Nigeria has in place for Small scale businesses and micro Enterprises , FG is going to bring N60billion one time loan to give N60,000 each to 1 million artisans and market women.

He said despite envisaged challenges , government intends to kick off the six Programmes simultaneously, though some would be first started as pilot schemes.

President Muhammadu Buhari had in his budget speech at the National Assembly, 500,000 unemployed graduates will be employed and trained as teachers to strengthen the country’s education system.

Elizabeth Archibong