The National Economic Council, NEC, on Thursday unanimously resolved to jettison the national social register used by former President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to implement its conditional cash transfer, reports the Vanguard.
This is as the Federal Government has announced that it will distribute 252 thousand metric tons of grains to states at a subsidized rate to cushion the effect of hardship occasioned by the removal of the gasoline subsidy.
The NEC meeting presided over by Vice President Kashim Shettima at the Council Chamber, Presidential Villa, said that the register had integrity issues as the criteria for its compilation were vague.
Briefing State House correspondents at the end of the meeting, Governor Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra State said, contrary to what the previous administration projected, it is not possible to digitally transfer money to the poorest of the poor, the majority of whom are unbankable.
He said that it was agreed that states should generate comprehensive registers and ensure that they are for vulnerable people only.
Professor Soludo, flanked by his Bauchi and Ogun State colleagues, Bala Mohammed and Dapo Abiodun, respectively, noted that beneficiaries of the supposedly transferred cash could not be identified in the villages.
He said NEC resolved that the states should come up with their own registers using formal and informal means to develop them, assuring that all beneficiaries at the subnational level could easily be accessed that way.
“We need to face the problem of the fact that we don’t have a credible register,” he said.
Soludo affirmed that NEC deliberated on ways to cushion the impact of the recent petroleum subsidy removal.
While fielding questions from journalists, Soludo said, “The first question that was raised is about the cost of governance. I think it’s an omnibus concept, and it’s not something you sit down in a meeting to legislate for every state.
“But the fact that the council recognizes that this is an issue that each tier of government should now focus on as an area of concern That we mustn’t live… even the cost of running the state, the way we even live, so some gave an example of a state governor going with 20 or so vehicles in a convoy, and all these have to be fueled, and so on. And the fact that we’re even amongst ourselves, almost like in a peer review, kind of setting ourselves up to talk for ourselves,
“We need to be sensitive to the times; we need to live within the average of the people that we’re governing, and so on. And knock off the waste and the irrelevance, so to speak.
“I will like to give you a simple example: When I assumed office, it was costing about N137 million every month to clean up public offices, and so on. Today, in Anambra, we’re doing N11 million a month from N137 million every month, just as an illustration. And it’s a thing that we’re persuading every one of us to look into, check into our books, look ourselves in the mirror, and move with the times.
“The second thing I’d like to respond to is about the social register that has been mentioned. I think at the council today, there was almost near unanimity among members. There’s a big question mark about the integrity of the so-called National Social Register.
“We have questions about how those names in the register were brought about, and I’m sure one question I hear asked is where it is for the most vulnerable group, and so on.
“Let’s talk about a social register. And then distributing things through the social register by digital means, implying that these people already have account numbers and phone numbers. Maybe we are talking about other people and not Nigerians. The poorest 25 percent of Nigerians are likely, if not totally, unbanked and don’t have access to the telephone.
“Now in thinking through that, we felt that sitting in Abuja and calling on somebody in Anambra to compile a list and send it to you, and then the person depends on who he brings, and the registers are generated, and people go to those villages and ask where those people are, and they don’t show up. This is stress testing. And we think that we need to go back to the drawing board.
“If you are delivering any such national or federal program from Abuja, it needs to be delivered via the governments that are there using their own format and mechanisms to generate the comprehensive register.
“That meets certain criteria, that you can stress test, and you can call out the people in the village, and everyone will confirm that these are the vulnerable people, if you are targeting vulnerable people, as it were.
“So the integrity test is what is missing with that register. Many have just described what is being counted as the National Register as bogus; some describe it as a phantom; some use all manner of terms. So we need to face the problem—the fact that we don’t have a credible register—and get back to work on this.
“And by the way, there’s something that I think my colleagues missed out on as part of those recommendations over the medium and longer term, and that is the possibility of negotiating a new minimum wage. That will obviously be on the table. But that has to be negotiated through the appropriate structures for doing that over time.”
Professor Soludo explained that packages to serve as palliatives were marshaled out to encourage the tiers of government to implement them in their respective fiscal spaces and fiscal capacities.
He said, “The federal, state, and local governments I want to highlight that as well, but there is quite some fiscal surplus that will be coming to the states, local governments, and the federal government, and we suggested that it would be nice if you could implement cash transfers, subject to your financial capacity based on peculiarities.
“Some might be able to do one, some might be able to do 10. Some might be able to do 20, as the case may be. It depends on their own capacity. Maybe a state, maybe some that are not even in a position to do that now.
“For example, if you have a state that has been owing salary arrears, workers have been owed for three years or four years. The priority now is to even start paying some of the salary arrears, or where pensioners have been owed their pension and gratuity for seven years, for example, the priority now might be to use part of the surplus to pay them.
“Then, there are also states that are with bumper harvests and that will say, you know what, I want to deploy a chunk of this to implementing cash transfer and several of the other immediate programs, and that’s why we couched this point, that this is ultimately still a federation. And the various states, local governments, and federal governments are at different levels in terms of their fiscal space and fiscal capacity. So states, local governments, and the federal government, depending on the resource, if the federal government decides to do the same cash transfers, for example, we are recommending that they do so using the framework of the states and local governments that are closer to the people, so to speak. That’s basically it. We didn’t sit down there to begin to say, Oh, okay, this one, your transfer will be like what is being bandied around in the media, whether it’s 8000, 10,000, 1000, or whatever. It will depend on what the state can afford and what they can afford. And I guess this is why we must communicate this clearly.
The Bauchi State governor, Senator Bala Mohammed, said that the Federal Government will distribute 252 thousand metric tons of grains to states at a subsidized rate to cushion the effect of subsidy removal.
Mohammed said that the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA, will also make available to the people its package.
On his side, Governor Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State said that though the hardship the masses are facing as a result of the removal of fuel subsidies was not the doing of the government as market forces determine the price, efforts were being made to cushion its effect.
Some of the packages include cash transfers to the poorest of the poor by the states, a cash award policy for all public servants, which should be implemented for six months in the first instance, and payment to public servants on outstanding liabilities such as pensions and allowances, among others.
He also said that the government is looking at the possibility of funding micro, small, and Medium Enterprises. MSME, which he said is the engine room of the business.
He further said the government plans immediate implementation of energy transition plants, converting mass transit buses to Compressed Natural gas (CNG, adding that the long-term vision is to establish electric automobile plants.
He said, “As a responsible government, we extensively deliberated on immediate steps in appreciation of the fact that our people are already feeling the pains of these very laudable and noble steps and have been very patient with this administration.
“To that extent, a subcommittee of the National Economic Council was set up, and that subcommittee reported some of the things that the governor of Anambra has shared with us, and their report is now the proposal of the National Economic Council and amongst what the governor of Anambra has shared with us.
“We also proposed accordingly that each state should begin to plan towards implementing a cash transfer program that will be based on the social registers of the states because it is the states that are better positioned to do that enumeration so you can ensure the integrity of the social register.
“Again, it was also proposed by the Council that we should implement a Cash Award Policy for all public servants. What’s a Cash Award Policy? That would be a policy that allows each sub-national to actually pay the public servants a certain prescribed amount of cash every month, and it was prescribed that that should be implemented for six months in the first instance.
You’ll be wondering why six months. The idea is that as much as we’re also particular about ameliorating the pains of our people immediately, a lot of sustainable measures are being put in place, and we hope that within now and the next six months, those sustainable measures will have begun to be visible, and then we can begin to taper down these cash awards. These cash awards, by the way, would be funds that will be placed in the hands of civil servants that will be tax-exempt.”
On his part, the acting Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Folashodun Shonubi, said the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, briefed the council and announced that it was ahead of the half-year target.
He said, “The Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue is making a presentation on what they have done so far and the level of collections. It was nice to know that they are ahead of their target for half a year. And we expect that before or by the time the year ends, they will exceed
“They also gave us some ideas of what next year should be like from them. And this year, we hope to make some N10 trillion. It is planned that next year, we should be able to work with all the agencies to provide N25 trillion as their contribution to the national coffers.”
