The Federal Government has revealed its plans to repackage its social intervention programmes to make sure more people at the grassroots benefit from it.
According to the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, who disclosed this during the “Good Morning Nigeria” programme on Nigeria Television Authority (NTA), the decision was taken after complaints by Nigerians that the social intervention programmes were not getting to the grassroots.
According to News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), the people in their various states, told the Ministers when they were directed by President Muhammadu Buhari to interact with them, that the programmes were not getting to as many people as they should.
He said that the traditional rulers and other stakeholders from various geopolitical zones made the same complaints when the presidential delegation led by the Chief of Staff to the President, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari, met with them.
Mohammed said, “What we found out when we got home was that the programmes were not trickling to the grassroots and that is why we have taken a decision to see how we can repackage them. Everywhere we went, even traditional rulers said they ought to be involved in the execution of the programmes.”
“I recently wrote a memo to our colleagues that we want the list of all the programmes, so that we can also periodically publish them and let them know where they can be accessed. It is not that there is no information on the programmes. It is the execution that needs fine-tuning. We need to involve other tiers of government in the execution of some of these programmes.”
The Minister said various social intervention programmes were initiated before the #EndSARS protests, and designed to create jobs for the youths and also alleviate poverty among women and the vulnerable groups.
What you should know
It can be recalled that there have been numerous public calls over the implementation of the various social intervention programmes, with allegations of corruption and diversion of some funds.
This has caused conflicts between the members of the National Assembly and officials of the executive arm of government, who are saddled with the task of implementing the programmes.
Some of these programmes include the N-Power programme, TRADERMONI, MARKETMONI, FARMERMONI, MSME Survival Fund, N75billion National Youth Investment Fund (NYIF), amongst others.