By the admission of the presidency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has been engaged in frivolous spending of resources, said to be scarce, in the name of funding palliatives for Nigerians. This admission is contained in a publication by the PBAT Media Center which listed Tinubu’s “palliatives thus far”. The listed palliative gestures include 50 percent on bus transportation during the yuletide season, free train services during the same yuletide season and N100m worth of palliatives to each House of Representatives member. Others include N200m worth of palliatives to each senator, N35, 000 provisional wage award for civil servants for two months, N185 billion shared to the 36 states and the FCT Abuja as palliatives, and N25, 000 conditional cash transfers to those said to be vulnerable Nigerians. This is outside the N3billion vired from the Covid-19 fund to the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs now more popular as Ministry of Sharing Money Opaquely.
Outside the above that have direct bearing on cash releases, the PBAT Media Office also listed the distribution of rice to state governors for sharing to the states and zero custom duty and VAT on CNG conversion kits imports as more palliatives approved by President Tinubu. However, so far, there has not been any public disclosure about how much the free train ride and the 50 percent bus fare cost tax payers. There are also no details of the total amount involved in the N35,000 provisional wage award for civil servants, the N20,000 Cash transfer to the “vulnerable”, the zero custom duty and Vat on CNG conversion kit and the rice given to governors to share in their states and the N220m and N100m palliatives released to federal legislators.
Whatever these details come to, when properly calculated, will no doubt be eye-popping. The total figure will ultimately show that the federal government had been frivolously wasteful in purposeful use of public money. It will further show that the government isn’t actually thinking right. This is because palliatives will not add any value to regenerating the Nigerian economy. They add nothing to wealth creation and will not alleviate even one percent of the poverty ravaging Nigerians at the moment. Come to think of it, no country ever grew its economy, or developed by sharing palliatives to its citizens. Directly feeding a population enhances the dependency index and increases poverty. No Nigerian family is proud to receive 10 kilograms of rice from the government annually or at intervals. I also doubt that any Nigerian family is proud to live on N25, 000 monthly from the government.
From my understanding of the Nigerian, most Nigerians want to engage in viable enterprise that bring them income and enhance their purchasing power. That is why most Nigerians look forward to doing things for themselves. They want to go back to their farms and shops and private offices. They want to operate in environments where bandits and kidnappers are no threats to their lives, those of their families and businesses. They want to be protected while engaging in legitimate enterprise. They want functional micro-credit systems that would grant them soft loans on terms that would encourage them to be more productive. They will prefer that government rather funds enterprise development which will increase opportunities for more self-employment and wealth creation.
Taking a cue from Bangladesh, a country with similar poverty indicators like Nigeria, the world saw and felt the impact of the development of a functional micro credit system as advocated by Prof. Muhammad Yunus through the Grameen bank which he founded. Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for physically showing that micro credit can help lift people (entrepreneurs) who are too poor to qualify for bank loans, out of poverty. At the prize award, the Nobel Committee said “lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty”. It also noted that “across cultures and civilizations, Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development”. The example provided by Yunus showed that enterprise funding (development), not palliatives, would lead people out of poverty.
Between 2015 and 2023, the Nigerian government engaged in cash transfers directly to persons it tagged “most vulnerable” using a very opaque register. That register would later need N3billion to verify. This suggests that what the Nigerian government had done since the creation of the Humanitarian Ministry, and before it, with such things as Tradermoni, Artisanmoni etc, was simply wasteful spending of borrowed money. They were wasted because they were politically designed and executed. For instance, tradermoni was shared publicly, at N10, 000 each, as part of political campaigns to lure market women. It was not surprising, therefore, that even after the same government had declared it a loan, no one agreed to pay back. This was because; the beneficiaries were mostly card carrying members of the ruling party. They had to show their party membership cards to qualify for the “loan”. Afterwards, they saw it a vote-buying technique. It was never intended to be a loan. Till date, there has not been any study to show the impact of those monies on the poverty level of the beneficiaries.
However, whatever amount Nigeria has spent on poverty eradication schemes in the past 10 years, would have had great positive impact on the lives of the people and the economy had government designed a policy that inculcates the apprenticeship system in creating jobs and funding enterprise development. For instance, all monies so far spent by President Tinubu on palliatives, can comfortably fund an apprenticeship programme for thousands of Nigerians with seed funds (grants) for start-ups. Ten thousand Nigerians (that is about 275 per state and FCT) who successfully undergo apprenticeship in any trade of choice, with N2 million as seed fund (grant) managed under supervision of their masters in every fiscal year, will cost Nigeria far less than the N185 billion shared to the 36 states and FCT as palliatives. Doing this over four years will create about 40,000 self-employed Nigerians whose activities will have more positive impact on the economy than the palliatives so far shared. In my mind, sharing anything at all in the name of palliatives is encouraging or funding corruption.