FG accuses Nigerians of sabotaging social investment programmes

The Federal Government has raised the alarm that its social investment programmes are being sabotaged by Nigerians.

National Coordinator of the National Social Investment Programmes (NSIP), Dr. Umar Buba Bindir, disclosed this, yesterday, at the opening of a result-based monitoring and evaluation training for staff of the scheme in Abuja.

He said the project, meant to benefit Nigerians, is not achieving the desired result because many people given the responsibility to drive it are sabotaging the efforts of the government.

The National Coordinator stated that “some people, who are to oversee the conditional cash transfer, are exploiting the ignorance of the beneficiaries and sharing the money with them.”

He went on: “Under the school feeding programme, we have received reports of some women, who are engaged to cook for the children, who give them less than what they are supposed to give and sometimes, poor quality food.

“It is the same thing with the N-Power programme. We engage young Nigerians to teach children in schools, pay them N30,000 monthly, but they don’t go to the schools.”

He noted that the unsavoury developments prompted the government to prioritise monitoring and evaluation of the entire scheme for better effect.

The week-long training for participants, drawn from 17 states, including Abia, Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Bauchi, Bayelsa, Benue, Borno, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Edo, Ekiti, Enugu, Gombe, Imo and Jigawa, which make up Batch A of the programme, is to retool Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) practitioners and managers in the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development for efficient service delivery.

Bindir told the beneficiaries that the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajiya Sadiya Umar Farouq, was disposed to objective reviews, reporting and documentation on progress/achievements in government’s policies and programmes, especially the ones that directly impact the poor and vulnerable citizens.

He continued: “Much of what you are going to experience at this training will be the unique new ways of doing things that seek to improve the lives of our people.

“You will agree with me that the fiscal pressures and ever-rising expectations from ordinary citizens provide a continuing impetus for governments to provide more services and with higher standards of quality.

“These pressures are also reason enough to find more cost-effective ways of operating so that governments can do more with less. For the government to be able to achieve the feat of doing more for the citizens with fewer resources, it is, therefore, necessary to deploy a very objective and effective tracking and assessment system that will measure the performance of the policy or programme/project towards achieving the objective and goal.”

The national coordinator further said: “The importance of Monitoring & Evaluation in current development and humanitarian programmes cannot be over-emphasised. M&E implementation in programmes/policies helps in improving performance and achieving results. Currently, there is a huge shift to Result-Based Management (RBM), which requires that organisations manage projects and programmes for the outcome. (The Guardian)