Pat Stevens/
The National Social Investment Office (NSIO) today said that the social intervention funds being managed by it had not been mismanaged as being speculated in some quarters.
This was in reaction to the claim by the acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu, that there is corruption in the National Social Investment Programme and Anchor Borrower’s Programme.
Magu made the allegation yesterday in Kaduna at the 15th Anti-Corruption Situation Room organised by the Human and Environmental Development Agenda.
The EFCC boss also called on civil society organisations to investigate the N-SIP.
The Office of the Vice-President superintends the N-SIP while the Central Bank of Nigeria funds the Anchor Borrower’s Programme.
The N-SIP programme was established in 2016 to ensure school feeding for primary school pupils, create jobs for 500,000 jobseekers, carry out conditional cash transfer for traders and the poor and enterprise promotion.
In a statement issued in Abuja, by the Communications Manager, Justice Bibiye, the NSIO said said since 2016 when the scheme commenced, the funding and disbursement had always been done by the Ministry of Budget and National Planning.
It noted that the Office of the Vice President is not involved in the financial transactions or the disbursement of funds for the programme.
It said the Steering Committee for the NSIO, chaired by the Vice President, supervises the implementation of the SIPs.
The Steering Committee comprises nine ministers, including that of Finance; Education; Health; Agriculture, Trade and Investment, Youth and Sports, Women Affairs; Labour and Productivity; Information; with the Ministry of Budget and National Planning as the Secretariat.
It said: “The NSIO has continued to prioritise transparency in disbursements. It has also ensured a level-playing field for all the beneficiaries, collated data and verified identities of beneficiaries of the different schemes, through a close collaboration with relevant agencies of government.
“All payments on the programmes are transferred directly to beneficiaries from the Federal Government coffers.
“The only exception is in relation to the cash transfer programme, basically because the beneficiaries reside in areas where there is a dearth of banking infrastructure.
“Being too poor to travel long distances to receive the monthly N5,000 disbursements, the decision was taken to ensure the funds are conveyed to them at their places of residence.
“Furthermore, in a departure from past experiences in similar programmes, whereby beneficiaries were selected in an opaque manner, this Administration’s Cash Transfer beneficiaries are identified by members of the communities themselves through a tripartite method.”
It said at the commencement of the programme, geographical poverty mapping was utilized to determine the sequence of Local Government Areas to commence work.
Magu, who was represented at the event by spokesman for the EFCC, Wilson Uwujaren, stated: “The crisis in Nigeria today boils down to corruption. The EFCC is doing everything possible to ensure that stolen resources are recovered and returned. Civil society organisations need to play more active role, especially in the National Social Investment Programme.
“Corruption has crept into the implementation of the programme. We want to ensure that we don’t create more crisis from a crisis situation. In the Anchor Borrower’s Programme, there are people who are bagging sand instead of fertiliser.”
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