One of the negative policies of Muhammadu Buhari’s disastrous outing as president of the Federal Republic was the introduction of the N5000 conditional cash transfer to some people which the government branded as extremely poor Nigerians. By that branding, the government of the time sustained an argument that those categories of Nigerians are so poor that N5000 only was enough to lift them from such poverty level.
This is as more Nigerians became multidimensional poor even with the operation of the conditional cash transfer policy. Information on nigeriapovertymap.org indicates that 65 percent of the multidimensionally poor, representing about 86.1 million of Nigeria’s population live in the north of the country while 35 percent, representing about 47 million of the index, live in the south.
Being multidimensionally poor translates to mean that these Nigerians are in no position to afford the necessary basics of living including cooking fuel, clean drinking water, and sanitation. They also lack access to healthcare. At least, these are the problems the government wanted to cure with N5000 monthly each. So far, there is no reliable statistic known to the Nigerian people about the number of people who received this N5000 monthly. There is also no document available to the Nigerian people on how much exactly the Buhari regime spent on the cash transfer exercise. Likewise, there are also no public data on how much the regime spent on other of its policies like tradermoni, artisanmoni, and any such programme which was created and funded to lift the Nigerian from poverty.
The opacity of the operation of those policies robbed Nigerians of proper information on the total financial exposure of the country to those policies. This makes it pertinent that a thinking and progress-minded government should be able to first cause an audit so as to establish how much of taxpayers’ money, or borrowed funds, was spent before embarking on a new programme. Such an audit may help tighten loose ends in the implementation of the policy. The refusal of the incumbent government to review the books and those policies suggests that the incumbent finds the shadowy nature of those policies attractive and helpful.
The question this brings to mind is this; if N5000 could not cure the multidimensional poverty of millions of Nigerians, how exactly will N8000 do so? Get my drift? Those who earned N5000 monthly were said to be in a state of life where they could not afford cooking fuel: thus means that they even lacked the capacity to fetch firewood from the forests or even generate charcoal. They were also said to be unable to afford healthcare. This suggests that even when a PHC near them freely makes prescriptions for their healthcare, they lacked the capacity to buy the drugs. This further suggests that even the N5000 they got monthly was insufficient to procure healthcare for them, and was also not enough to guarantee them good drinking water neither was it good enough to get them enough cooking fuel that would last the month. The meaning here is that the N5000 monthly cash transfer, whatever it totals in, was wasted as there is no evidence anywhere that it indeed lifted anyone above the poverty base neither do we have statistical evidence that it positively impacted the economy.
As we know, poor people breed more children. A poor family of just four (parents and two children) has no way of surviving on N5000 monthly even where school, healthcare, electricity, and housing is free. This is because the inflationary trend, which sat at 22.22 percent as of April 2023, makes nonsense of whatever power that N5000 wields in the open market.
Now, the N5000 just got N3000 added to it. This makes it N8000 with an expanded reach of about 12m for six months. While the package comes to N5000 billion it translates merely to N48,000 for each of the 12m families over six months. In other words, the ‘lucky’ families will get N48,000 each from the Federal government over a six-month period. With the cost of raw food in the local Nigerian market, which statistics estimate to hit the inflation ratio at 24 percent by the end of July 2023, the beneficiary of N8000 monthly will only have more poverty to contend with. This is because the inflationary trend can only keep rising and as such wipe off whatever effect the N8000 palliative is meant to achieve in the face of the rapid rise in the cost of services including transportation and medical care. For instance, the cost of medicine has already hit the roof. Most autoimmune drugs have gone beyond the purchasing power of those that need them. Take a small sachet of milk, for instance, you’ll discover that even the producers are struggling to stay in the market. A family of four, as mentioned above, will not be able to manage N8000 for soup and garri or fufu only in one month no matter how miserly the family is. This is without consideration to other demands including clothing and housing.
Get me! I am not arguing that it is wrong to create palliative to assist the people especially when the fund is a World Bank loan. I would rather that government thinks through the impacts of its palliative policy and design strategies that would make the policy achieve the desired impact on the people and the economy. For instance, a family that gets N8000 every month may waste it on basic necessities while one that gets N48,000 (one-off payment) may invest it in a small trade (like selling roasted or boiled corn) and grow with it. A young man just out of apprenticeship will likely find N8000 unhelpful in acquiring tools. But the N48,000 payment will help him get some initial take-off tools. Also, N8000 to a poor family every month will enhance laziness and poverty. But a one-off payment of N48,000 may help develop some form of trading and self-reliance.
Also, if government has its strategies right, it may find investing N5000 billion in businesses as a way of boosting their capacity to increase output and as such employ more workers whose salaries will be more regular with the added capacity to positively impact the economy much a better option than sharing N8000 monthly for just six months. Even merely funding mass housing projects at N12 billion in the 36 states, for instance, has the capacity of impacting the economy more through job creation and trade than the N8000 monthly would do. Simply put, no serious-minded nation borrows money just to share. I guess this is why Nigeria must be weary of the pies dangled before it by World Bank and other multinational lending institutions. Further reading and internalizing the message in John Perkins’ ‘Confessions of an Economic Hit Man’, may help in understanding the chains on the neck of countries that take World Bank loans. Loans should only be taken to fund investments. That way, you are sure of generating interest and capacity to pay back.