The NG-Cares program National Coordinator, Dr. Abdulkarim Obaje (4th from L) in a group photograph during the occasion.
By Tony Adibe
The Southeast states of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo have, so far, earned $59,494,731million and reached out to not less than 389,377 vulnerable citizens since the inception of Nigeria Community Action for Resilience and Economic Stimulus (NG-CARES) programme.
The National Coordinator, NG-Cares Program, Dr. Abdulkarim Obaje disclosed this on Thursday during the opening of a 2-day “Peer Learning & Experience Sharing Event” organised for stakeholders in the southeast zone, although people attended from outside the region.
The NG-Cares programme is run by the Federal Ministry of Budget & Economic Planning and is specifically targeted at the vulnerable citizens with the aim of lifting them out of poverty.
Addressing the participants, Dr. Obaje, who apparently gave a breakdown of the figures explained that Abia earned $21,848,013 and reached out to 102,977 people; Anambra earned $4,581,574 and reached out to 45,153 people; Ebonyi earned $6,995,392 and reached out to 76,697 people; Enugu got $6,569,750 and reached out to 75,864 while Imo State earned $19,500,002 and reached out to 88,686 people.
He said the various interventions in the southeast states were in the areas of Social Transfer – $11,723,702; Labour Intensive Public Workfare – $3,780,274; Livelihood Grant – $1,017,383; Community and Vulnerable Groups Basic Service Delivery – $15,691,372; Support to Increase Food Production $7, 727, 053; Labour Intensive Agricultural Infrastructure -$11, 968, 968; Agricultural Assets for Production and Mitigating food Loss & Waste – $3,049,015; Upgrading Wet Markets -$485,231; Conditional Matching Grant – $205,410; Operational Support Grant $3, 845, 045 and IT Enhancement – $789,110.
Obaje explained that NG-CARES used to be the COVID-19 Action Recovery Program for Nigerians but later renamed Nigeria Community Action For Resilience And Economic Growth.
“The federal government approached the World Bank for a $750B Credit, and the import of that credit was to ensure economic recovery for the rural poor; those that are living in the rural areas; the urban poor; the rural farmers and for local economy operators.
The money was supposed to catalyse them, ginger them so that they can come back to life. We have finished with that stage of recovery; where we are now is that stage of resilience; talking about economic stimulus.
So, the program is actually dedicated to helping every vulnerable Nigerian in every nook and cranny of this country,” the National Coordinator said.
Obaje also spoke on the strictness of the process of intervention to ensure that only the vulnerable would benefit from it. “We are using a social register, which means that is only poor Nigerians that are captured in the social register. And these are the only ones that are eligible to benefit from this federal government intervention,” he said, adding, however, that the state governments have their own roles in implementation of the program.
He said: “As you are aware, the social register is opened by the states and captured by the states. It is manned by the state governments for this intervention. The program is purely driven by the states, and they are the ones injecting their resources into it, and they are reimbursed through our independent assessment.”
On the measures put in place to prevent abuse of the process and make sure only the vulnerable citizens benefit from NG-Cares, Obaje said various mechanisms exist, one of which is “entering the Independent Assessment which we do.”
He explained the independent assessment as a situation “where we send independent people to visit the states and monitor or assess their performance. And if the states are found to have done the wrong thing, they are not reimbursed. Any where we discover that rich people are benefiting where the poor ought to benefit from, we will not reimburse such a state. We also have third party monitors who are sent to the states to go and find out the processes they are using; whether the processes are the right ones.
We also go; the World Bank also goes to monitor. The members of large society are also encouraged to, please, check how these things are working across the country. In fact, something of over N6billion should be of interest for people to go and check if things are working accordingly or not.”
In his speech, the Enugu State Governor, Dr. Peter Mbah said that his administration’s focus was in tandem with the goal of NG-Cares which is to ensure the reduction of poverty in Enugu State and make sure the right people – the poor citizens – benefit from the process, and not the politically exposed individuals.
“So far, at every point in time, we make sure that the intervention gets to the right of people. And not going to the politically exposed people, but to the right people that need it,” said Governor Mbah, who was represented by the Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Prof. Chidiebere Onyia.
The SSG described as “natural collaboration” the alliance between Enugu State and the Federal Government in matters concerning NG-Cares and poverty reduction, adding that Governor Mbah when he came into office, had a vision of zero poverty headcount in the state.
“The second one is to grow our economy from $4.4B to $30billion. All these have economic implications across the board. Therefore, the NG-Cares program itself is aligned with His Excellency’s vision,” he said.
The Enugu State government is looking at achieving the same thing the NG-CARES is trying to achieve. So, this is a natural collaboration, and His Excellency is very focused on ensuring that we use this support from NG-CARES as our partners to continue to work with the MLDG, increasing our penetration by helping the vulnerable Nigerian women entrepreneur, ensuring that we move them from one economic trajectory to the other.
Onyia also spoke briefly on one of the challenges the administration has faced while implementing the program in the state. “Usually, embarking on a program like this, data is always a major issue. So, we are working to clean up the data to ensure that the data we have is credible, verifiable. So, we working with the NG-Cares and we’re also working with our data people to review and analyse these documents,” he said.
The event is expected to end today, Friday with participants churning out ideas and suggestions that would bring about the continuous success of the NG-Cares programme.
