Presidency Attacks Lawan, Gbajabiamila Over N-Power, Others

The Presidency has rubbished the allegations attributed to the leadership of the National Assembly by a section of the media, to the effect that the President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s National Social Investment Programmes (NSIPs) was a failure.

According to the Special Adviser to the President on Social Investments, Maryam Uwais, in a statement issued to DAILY POST on Wednesday and titled “Lawan, Gbajabiamila Got It Wrong”, it was quite unfortunate that these false narratives were attributed to the President of the Senate, Ahmed Lawan, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr. Femi Gbajabiamila.

She noted that it was subtly aimed at discrediting the impact of the NSIPs during the time it was under the supervision of the Office of the Vice President.

The Presidency stated that “it has become necessary to clarify the issues in the public domain given the gravity and implications of the narrative conveyed, as well as the caliber of persons involved.”

According to the statement, it was untrue that the National Social Investment Programmes (NSIPs) had gulped N2trn since 2016 as alleged by the leadership of the National Assembly (NASS).

The statement read: “While the total appropriation by the National Assembly (NASS) from inception, for the four NSIPs, is N1.7 trillion, the actual funds released for the NSIPs between January 2016 and October 2019 (when the NSIPs were handed over to the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development), amounted to N619.1 billion, constituting 36.4% of the total appropriation from the NASS..”

Also, the monies released for the N-SIPs can be further broken down into 14.03% (2016); 35% in 2017; 43.5% in 2018 and 57.8% (as at Sept 2019) of the N500B in 2016 and N400B appropriated for the subsequent years. It should be noted that for 2017 to 2020, the sum of N100B was appropriated specifically for the National Housing Fund hosted by the Federal Ministry of Finance.

“These releases covered operational activities and payments to 13,363,680 beneficiaries across all the 4 NSIPs, all of whom can all be verified either through their BVN numbers or their unique numbers generated by the National Social Register, those identities having been generated for the poorest of the poor who do not own bank accounts for sundry reasons..”

As at September 2019, the funds had expended as follows: On the: Job Creation programme (549,500 N-Power graduates and non-graduates and 7 Technology Hubs); National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (in 33 States, 9,963,762 pupils to 107,862 cooks in 54,952 primary schools); the National Cash Transfer Programme (including the development of the National Social Register by the National Social Safety Net Coordination Office) 1,491,296 poor and vulnerable households comprising 6,056,872 individuals in 33 States and 620,947 cash transfer beneficiaries; and the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (managed by the Bank of Industry); a total of 2,279,380 TraderMoni, MarketMoni and Far