Nigeria's Democracy And Its Crisis Deliberate, Avoidable: 20 states receieve stipends under conditional cash transfer programme.

Hajiya Maryam Uwais, The Special Adviser to The President on Social Investments, Office of the Vice-President, Nigeria. Photo: Google.

Nigeria's special adviser to the President on National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) Mrs Maryam Uwais has said that 297, 973 poor households in 20 states in Nigeria are now being paid stipends under the conditional cash transfer programme(NCTP).

According to INDEPENDENT newspaper, the states are as follows: Jigawa, Bauchi, Kogi, Osun, Cross River, Anambara, Katsina, Kano, Taraba, Gombe, Adamawa, Niger, Nassarawa, Benue, Oyo, Ekiti, Kwara, Borno (IDP), Kaduna and Plateau.

 Mrs Uwais said her department has trained 2,495 community facilitators whose respomsibility is to engage the caregivers in the households being paid, facilitate the forming of co-operatives, basic financial training, skills and support.

"We also have collated data on the demographics on each community we engage to facilitate action on education, health, access, payment and connectivity. She said: "It is important for us to get the targeting right so only the poorest of the poor will get paid. We have, according to statistics, up to 80 million people that are poor.

So what we do is sign an MOU with states specifying their various roles and responsibility, despite the fact that it's not enforceable, but this helps various stakeholders to know their basic responsibilities regarding the scheme.

We have argued that the restructuring of the current political structure will address Nigeria's poverty problems by reducing duplication of autonomous functions by the centre. There are some local government areas created for political purposes only for funds allocated to those LGA's to be embezzled by few people.

There is this issue of wastes in patronage politics- traditional rulers, funding of pilgrimmage and other white elephant projects including wastes on fighting corruption, funding of terrorism war, funding fraudlent elections, security votes, bogus legislature, bogus executive, etc. These funds can be properly channelled to fund growth policies which will have more impact on the lives of people. Poverty is man made and can be eradicated.

New threats including population increase, technology could pose greater risk so i wonder how long the government will continue to pay this kind of stipend when they have a better option to restructure.

Uche Okeke is a Social Entrepreneur.