IRONICALLY, those who have consolidated their place on the economic ladder on the basis of access to and capture of state resources make the grave mistake to think that fellow citizens abandoned in the dungeon of poverty, would merely roll over without a fight. The fact that the Nigerian State now has to use its military might, and scarce financial resources to confront its own young citizens who have been won into the camps of extremists and terrorists, is a colossal national tragedy.
The sheer extent of this tragedy exemplifies the need for a comprehensive social protection policy that delivers results within the confines of transparency and sustainability. Would Boko Haram have had the hundreds of thousands of recruits it now uses to unleash terror on Nigerians, if education, skills and jobs were provided to the young Nigerians in the North East?
The stark reality of the abandonment of the youth and other vulnerable segments of the population comes into bold relief when one considers the fact that extremist elements and the founders of deranged sects like Boko Haram merely took advantage of young Nigerians who could see no future in a socially lopsided system. In the face of non-existent governance, Boko Haram gave alienated young people a false sense of security.
They succeeded in selling their hateful and blood thirsty philosophy by first filling a void that governments for decades allowed to exist. A perusal of the literature on Boko Haram would reveal how the bureaucracy of the then fledging terrorist sect went as far as providing food and distributing motorcycles to win the allegiance of thousands of youths.
So if nothing else eloquently explains it, the devastation and the chronic sense of insecurity spawned by the insurgency in the Northeast, as well as previous and recent skirmishes in the Niger Delta by the militants should warn us. The message is clear: there are far reaching national security implications from a blatant refusal to carry the vast majority of citizens along in the drive to create national prosperity.
It speaks to astute statesmanship that President Buhari is staking a good chunk of his first budget on lifting close to two million ordinary Nigerians out of extreme poverty through a slew of social spending. It is from this prism that stakeholders should assess and critique the President’s plan, in the eyes of these needy Nigerians a timely balm to the injuries of poverty and other forms of privations.
However, laudable these social protection initiatives may be, there are hard, albeit uncomfortable questions around strategy and methodology that must be answered. The drivers of the system must embark on a lesson laden excursion into the recent past to understand why similar schemes by previous governments failed to make the impacts that were desired. At the time Nigeria returned to democracy in 1999, when the term “dividends of democracy,” entered the national lexicon, there were national programmes aimed at social protection and poverty eradication.
The National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP), which was set up in 2000, failed to deliver on its mandate. It was a beautiful programme on paper, but in terms of impact, there was very little to show for the big bureaucracy that was erected to implement the programme. Also gone with the wind were the billions that were voted for the programme. Off the cuff, it is easy to point out how factors like corruption, alienation of the poor, lapses in organisation and a slew of other systematic problems combined to vanquish similar good intentions in the past.
Nonetheless, the task before the government now would be to craft its social schemes with clear cut lessons about the nature and dimensions of these factors that could stand in the way of success. Such landmines would have to be creatively side stepped for results to be achieved. Beyond the lessons from a very dark past is the fundamental question about how the administration would deal with extant challenges of structure and strategy. While it is laudable that the administration is not about erecting some monstrous cash guzzling bureaucracy to implement the plan, there is the need for close control of all department of government that would be involved in implementation.
As things stand also, there is a dearth of data around which the social protection plans would be built. The implication is that the administration would have to start from ground zero. That is both a challenge and an opportunity; it then means the government would have to explore the option of deploying field officers to 774 Local Government Areas for the herculean and critical task of data capture.
That would be a lot of work, but it is the hard, transparent and result orientated road open to the government. The 774 Local Governments could be the perfect starting point to ensure an inclusive and transparent system. It is similarly good that the President has created an office within the Presidency to be in charge of coordination, and linkages with other relevant institutions.
Since this is a start from ground zero, a lot of the spadework must first be done to engrave the mission in the minds of the drivers, create a clear strategy, and put in place mechanisms for tracking outputs and outcomes. Finally, a massive project like this is not one the government should seek to implement alone. It must seek and build robust partnerships with credible grassroots organisations. The right partnership is critical for oversight and feedback. In the end, the success of President Buhari’s social protection plans would not be viewed from the altruism of the administration’s intentions, but on the basis of the concrete impacts they make on the lives of benefiting citizens.
GUARDIAN
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