The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to “promptly set up a presidential panel of enquiry to thoroughly, and transparently investigate spending on all social safety-nets and poverty alleviation programmes as well as projects executed between 2015 and 2022”.
It will be recalled that until 2019, the social safety-nets programmes including TraderMoni were under the Office of the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo. After the re-election of President Buhari, the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development was created with Sadiya Farouq Umar appointed as pioneer Minister.
SERAP also urged the President to ensure that the findings of the investigation are widely published for suspected corrupt public office holders to face justice to allow public funds to be channeled to appropriate quarters towards reducing poverty in Nigeria.
SERAP in the statement signed by the Deputy Director, Kolawole Oluwadare was reacting to the National Bureau of Statistics report released on poverty rate in Nigeria. The report suggests a grave violation of the public trust, and the lack of political will to genuinely address poverty, and uphold government’s constitutional and international human rights obligations.
The organisation noted that government has legal obligations to effectively and progressively address and combat extreme poverty as a matter of human rights but its failure to address the extreme poverty has resulted in high levels of inequality, and serious violations of economic and social rights of Nigerians, particularly the socially and economically vulnerable sector of the population.
It asked the Federal Government to prioritise investment in quality education and healthcare as well as to redirect some of the unnecessary spending in the 2023 budget such as spending by the Presidency on feeding and travels, and money allocated to the National Assembly in the budget to address poverty as a human rights issue”.
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SERAP advised that a Supplementary Appropriation Bill, which reflects the proposed redirected budget should be urgently sent to the National Assembly for its approval.”
It explained that government has a sacred duty to ensure transparency and accountability in the spending of the country’s resources, including the spending of public funds on social safety-nets and poverty alleviation programmes and projects as according to Section 14(2)(b) of the Nigerian Constitution of 1999 [as amended] which provides that, “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government”.
The recent report by the National Bureau of Statistics shows damning revelations that some 133 million Nigerians are poor, despite the government reportedly spending N500 billion yearly on “Social Investment Programmes”. Half of all poor people in the country are children.
“The Bureau’s data also indicated that over half of the population of Nigeria are multidimensionally poor and cook with dung, wood or charcoal, rather than cleaner energy as high deprivations are also apparent nationally in sanitation, access to healthcare, food insecurity, and housing while half of all poor people are children.
(Editor: Terverr Tyav)
