Recession forces Presidency to reduce N500bn poverty alleviation fund

As the nation continues to groan and grind under the present economic recession, the Federal Government has disclosed its intention to scale down the earlier appropriated N500 billion poverty alleviation fund. The Special Adviser to the President on Social Investments, Maryam Uwais, explained that the decision to scale down the fund was taken in view of the economic challenges facing Nigeria at the moment.
Uwais, who stated this yesterday at the Civil Society Information Dissemination On Monitoring Federal Government Social Protection Programme, SPP, on SDGs, said it became necessary as revenue generation has dwindled compared to when the programme started.
She was, however, silent on the amount that would be used to fund the programme, stating rather that it will be determined by the Ministry of Finance.
Her words, “We have budgetary constrain so we have to scale down the fund and this depends on what the Ministry of Finance gives us but clearly the government is not getting the revenue it expects to get.
“Although money was yet to be released for the program but we have being developing framework for the implementation of the project. The cash transfer program was about to start in nine states of the federation as they are about compiling the register of poor people in the states.
“Therefore, we will have to scale down because there are disbursement, it depends on Ministry of Finance, whatever they give us is what we will use but clearly government is not getting the revenue it expected to get.”
The presidential aide stated that the special intervention project was designed for delivery under five defined programmes, which include N-Power, Home Grown School Feeding, Cash transfers, Enterprise and Empowerment, and Stem Bursary Programmes.
She maintained that the school feeding programme has kicked-off, but will engage Civil Society Organisations, CSOs, for effective monitoring of the programme.
According to Uwais, “We are developing a comprehensive register of vulnerable people in the society so we want to engage the CSOs to ensure that the register is authentic and realisable.
“Nigerians are different we were worried about our programme being politicised, so we want to make sure that our programme reach every Nigerian irrespective of political admiration or irrespective of ethnicity or culture.”