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•The sad story of humanitarian ministry •Scrap it, experts tell FG
By Uche Usim
For a developing country like Nigeria battling man-made and natural disasters, having a social intervention ministry is commendable.
That, perhaps, was the thinking of the federal government when it established the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Poverty Alleviation in 2019 by an executive pronouncement by then President Muhammadu Buhari, at the inauguration of his cabinet. Mrs Sadiya Umar Farouq was appointed the pioneer Minister.
Given that the ministry was conceived and born at a time Nigeria faced severe humanitarian crises arising from terrorism, banditry and frightening climatic challenges, many clinked glasses for its birth. Social scientists adduced reasons why it was a good set-up, especially as it aligns with the global best practices.
For instance, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in its, ‘Nigeria: 2019-2021 Humanitarian Response Strategy (January 2019 – December 2021)’, estimated that 7.1 million Nigerians remained in need of humanitarian assistance in what is now known in the humanitarian parlance as BAY states: that is, Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA) equally indicated that it was working with its partners to support the government of Nigeria and of countries hosting Nigerian refugees. It simultaneously launched the Humanitarian Response Programme (HRP) as well as the Regional Refugee Response Plan, respectively seeking “$848 million and $135 million to continue providing food, water, shelter and protection to the most vulnerable people in Nigeria and neighbouring Cameroon, Chad and Niger.”
The conflict has generated large population movements with the current displacement figure running into about three million individuals. That excludes displacements and humanitarian crises resulting from herdsmen-farmers’ conflicts or banditry in certain parts of Nigeria, as well as another 800,000 people in areas that are inaccessible to international humanitarian actors in the North-East.
Performance assessment
Five years down the line, the results of a performance assessment of the ministry are not looking good, especially one that has had a N2.38 trillion budget between 2020 and 2024. For 2020, it got N453.3 billion, in 2021, N456.1 billion, 2022, N507.9 billion; 2023, N426 billion and in 2024, N532.5 billion.
Economic analysts are worried that despite the aforementioned figures, the November 2022 Multi-dimensional Poverty Index (MPI) report, compiled by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and its partners, showed that 63% of persons living within Nigeria (133 million people) are multi-dimensionally poor.
The national MPI is 0.257, which explains that poor people in Nigeria experience just over one-quarter of all possible deprivations known to mankind.
65% of the poor (86 million people) live in the north, while 35% (nearly 47 million) live in the south. Poverty levels across states vary significantly, with the incidence of multi-dimensional poverty ranging from a low of 27% in Ondo to a high of 91% in Sokoto.
The NBS report further showed that over half of the population of Nigeria are multi-dimensionally poor and cook with dung, wood or charcoal, rather than cleaner energy. High deprivations are also apparent nationally in sanitation, time to healthcare, food insecurity, and housing.
In general, the incidence of monetary poverty is lower than the incidence of multi-dimensional poverty across most states. In Nigeria, 40.1% of people are poor according to the 2018/19 national monetary poverty line, and 63% are multi-dimensionally poor according to the National MPI 2022.
Multi-dimensional poverty is higher in rural areas, where 72% of people are poor, compared to 42% of people in urban areas.
The national MPI is reported with a linked Child MPI, which provides additional information on Multidimensional Child Poverty in Nigeria. According to the report:
Two-thirds (67.5%) of children (0–17) are multi-dimensionally poor according to the National MPI, and half (51%) of all poor people are children.
The highest deprivations are in the indicator of child engagements – where over half of poor children lack the intellectual stimulation that is pivotal to early childhood development.
Child poverty is prevalent in rural areas, with almost 90% of rural children experiencing poverty.
Across the geo-political zones, the child MPI shows higher poverty in the North-East and North-West (where 90% of children are poor) and lower poverty in the South-East and South-West (74% and 65.1% respectively). The incidence of child MPI is above 50% in all States and greater than 95% in Bayelsa, Sokoto, Gombe and Kebbi.
Four million Nigerians – 2.1% of the population – live with a child aged 15–17 who is the first generation in that household to have completed primary school.
With these revelations, it calls to question the potency and impact of the social investment and poverty alleviation programmes run by the humanitarian ministry.
More so, commentaries on various social media platforms can be summed up in one sentence; “the ministry pauperized the country while claiming to be empowering its people”.
Audit and prosecution
It was a soothing relief when President Bola Tinubu, last week, ordered the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to launch a full-blown investigation into the finances of the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs.
The President tasked a panel headed by the Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Minister of Finance, Wale Edun, to conduct a comprehensive diagnosis of the financial architecture and framework of the social investment programmes, which many allege are the conduits through which billions of naira is evacuated from the national coffers without proper accountability.
So far, three women are at the center of the alleged financial malfeasance at the ministry. They are Hajiya Sadiya Umar Farouq, her successor, Betta Edu (now suspended) and Halima Shehu, the suspended National Coordinator of the National Social Investment Programme (NSIPA).
Shehu, through EFCC’s intervention, has coughed out N39.8 billion out of N44.8 billion allegedly embezzled from the government’s account.
Mrs Farouq, according to the EFCC, has been linked to an alleged N37.1 billion fraud perpetrated through a contractor, James Okwete.
Citing health challenges, she officially wrote to the EFCC seeking an extension of the deadline to appear before the investigators.
Umar-Farouq first stirred the hornet’s nest when she insisted that 382,765 pupils, 124,589 households, and 2,859 schools in Ogun State, Lagos State, and Abuja, benefited from the school feeding programme during COVID-19 lockdown in 2021.
She also literally swore that N500 million was spent on feeding schoolchildren in two states and Abuja during COVID-19 lockdown.
It sounded both insulting and disgraceful as the whole country was shut down including schools.
Mrs Betta Edu on her part came under fire for approving the transfer of N585.2 million into the private bank account of a civil servant, who is the accountant in charge of grants for vulnerable Nigerians.
She also approved N3.1 million for flight tickets and airport taxis to Kogi State which has no airport. She was later invited by the EFCC and was reportedly denied access into the presidential villa after the suspension was made public.
Last October, the House of Representatives summoned the suspended Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Betta Edu, to brief the chamber on the discomforting status of the federal government’s conditional cash transfer programme to 15 million households.
They shredded the disbursement procedure, saying it was starved of transparency and dipped in fraud. Others allegations were; multiple payments to some beneficiaries, payments to dead beneficiaries, continuously paying those who exited the scheme as their economic life improved, fake members on the register and others.
The lawmakers asked the minister to provide details on the collation of data and the distribution of funds.
In commemoration of the 2023 International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, President Bola Tinubu launched the conditional cash transfer programme in October as one of the vehicles to evacuate vulnerable Nigerians out of the pit of misery. The programme aims to provide monthly cash transfers of N25,000 to each of the 15 million beneficiary households for three months to cushion the impact of the fuel subsidy removal and help eradicate poverty across the country.
The humanitarian ministry, last year, said it had made the CCT more transparent by introducing NIN and BVN to the scheme so only authentic individuals benefit.
“We have struck off many names following the verification. The final figure will be out in weeks; it may run into millions.
“Some are dead; some are no longer in that category (of the poor) and some could not be identified at locations given, so wait till we get the compilation ready,”, the ministry said.
However, many Nigerians want investigations extended to other agencies handling poverty alleviation responsibilities.
They are happy that the dragnet of the ongoing probe of the sleaze involving past and current officers at the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation has widened as EFCC officials are also quizzing Chief Executive Officers of some banks and contractors.
Scrap or remodel intervention framework –Experts
As investigations into the fraud in the humanitarian ministry deepen, economic experts have called for the total scrapping of the ministry or totally remodel its intervention framework to fortify corporate governance.
In a telephone interview with Daily Sun, Nigeria’s first professor of the capital markets, Prof Uche Uwaleke, did not mince words when he pushed for the immediate scrapping of the ministry and its duties reverted to the Vice President’s office as it was pre-2019.
According to him, the ministry has been embroiled in one monumental graft or the other since inception, making its dissolution the most potent option.
He said: “That ministry is too expensive to run and it should be scrapped and its duties housed under the VP’s office. Under Osinbajo, social interventions seemed better managed and we didn’t have this level of issues.
“More importantly, Cash Conditional Transfers should not be part of social intervention duties of the ministry because it’s highly vulnerable to abuse and it is the area we have issues.
“We need strong internal control measure. We also need strong monitoring and evaluation mechanisms
“If we had this, these level of graft won’t have happened. No one person should be able huge funds of over N30 billion. Loopholes should be blocked and there should be some sort of quarterly report to know exactly what has been spent and on what”, he said.
In his intervention, Muda Yusuf, the Director General of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE), noted that current social intervention framework used by the ministry was completely ineffective.
“The current framework is vulnerable to corruption. No matter who you put there and with this framework, we will have the same sad tales.
“We need to review it to minimize the corruption. For me, I’ll push for policy-driven palliatives. What I mean by that is using tariff and taxation to support small businesses, registered cooperatives and other bodies of SMEs and households.
“We can also use monetary policy and fiscal policy tools to provide some sort of potent intervention programmes. We can have interventions around rural development, rural health, security and so on. Those in IDP camps want security more than anything else. If you provide security for them, they’ll exit the vulnerability bracket and won’t salivate over stipends.
“So, we need to change the model because this one is vulnerable to corruption. No matter who you put there, we will be in the same quagmire”, he said.
More spending
Despite swimming in controversy over previous spending, the federal government, via the humanitarian ministry, will spend about N610 billion for temporary wage awards to federal civil servants and a conditional cash transfer programme to vulnerable individuals and households.
The money was accommodated in the supplementary budget for Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
In the document, the wage award for four months will cost the federal government around N210 billion while the conditional cash transfer will gulp N400 billion.
The scrapping of the fuel subsidy regime and other sudden reforms undertaken by President Tinubu sent the naira tumbling and pushed Nigeria’s inflation rate to record levels.
On the flip side, the World Bank estimated that the removal of fuel subsidies would send an additional 7 million Nigerians into poverty.
To mitigate this scenario, the administration of former President Buhari secured an $800 million World Bank facility for cash transfer to poor Nigerians.
Assistance to Nigerians
It is not necessarily all bad news as the humanitarian community provided life-saving assistance to almost 5.6 million affected people in 2017, another 5.5 million in 2018, and four million as of October 2019 (UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 2019). The crisis, which once affected six states, is now contained to the BAY states. An appreciable progress has been made, but as the conflict continues, significant humanitarian needs remain.
The ministry disclosed last year that it has so far impacted the lives of over 15 million families through the NSIP which has been the key instrument in uplifting the lives of the poorest of the poor individuals in the country.
“The NSIP has provided assistance and hope to millions of Nigerians. Let me once again list them as the National Homegrown School Feeding Programme, N-Power, CCT and the GEEP. The programmes were all initiated by the Federal Government as part of an intervention programme to cater for the welfare and well-being of vulnerable Nigerians. The NHGSFP has already captured and fed over 9.9 million pupils across the 36 states of the federation, including the FCT.
“The ministry, through the N-Power Programme has supported over 1.5 million unemployed youths across Nigeria. The ministry has provided and supervised the distribution of relief materials to victims of recent food disasters across the country. It may interest you to know that I don’t even know the beneficiaries of the CCT programme. It is a transparent programme that I don’t even know the beneficiaries in Zamfara state where I come from because the beneficiaries are the poorest of the poor who are selected by members of the community.”
