Acting President Osinbajo Will Always Defend Rule Of Law, Protect All Nigerians

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The Acting President has always acted to defend the rule of law and course of Justice. He is firmly committed to the best standards of governance that primes and values the life of every Nigerian, regardless of religion or ethnicity. As far as he is concerned, all Nigerians are equal and loved by God, and does not discriminate on the basis of religion.

Alongside the President, Prof. Osinbajo is unwavering in ensuring that anyone who violates the law, should and must be made to face the full extent of the law. He has spoken out publicly on the inherent weaknesses in the nation’s Criminal Justice System, and is working assiduously within government to bring the reforms necessary, including the option of community policing.

The current limitations of the criminal justice system however affects virtually every kind of crime, including the example of high profile murders of the past, many of which remain unsolved.

This administration will continue to defend and protect the lives of all Nigerian citizens. It’s the reason the President gave firms instructions to security agencies-military and police to send reinforcements to Southern Kaduna to enforce the peace. The Southern Kaduna crisis has become a worrying recurrent decimal over the years.

We -all of us in government, political, religious leaders, traditional rulers and the entire Nigerian people, especially the elites- must work to find a lasting solution.

Situations like the crisis in Southern Kaduna while capable of provoking emotive reactions and potent for divisive rhetorics, call for the display of true leadership virtues from everyone of us. We should resist the temptations to succumb to divisive tendencies.

Revisiting The Social Investment Programme:

The Social Investment Programme, SIP, which include Conditional Cash Transfer scheme,   Home Grown School Feeding, N-Power and the General Enterprise and Empowerment Programme  where swan songs as President Muhammadu Buhari criss-crossed the nation seeking for votes. Since coming into office, he has reserved no effort to ensure that he kept faith with the electorate despite the challenges of declining revenue.

The schemes as designed are intended to pull millions of Nigerians up from the morass of poverty. Remarkably, a whopping N500billion was appropriated for the programmes in the 2016 budget with the same amount replicated in the 2017 Appropriation Bill. Fittingly, in our view, the interventions represent a carefully-thought out economic strategy already putting money into the hands of people, improving their consumption power and helping to reflate the economy. It also involves all societal groups: children, the poor and vulnerable, the elderly, unemployed graduates and even budding entrepreneurs.

Already, the Federal Government has spent over N375 million this year (2017)  for the feeding of almost 700,000 primary school pupils in  five states of  Anambra, Ogun, Oyo, Osun and Ebonyi  in implementing the Home Grown School Feeding  plan.  The amount is expected to rise by the time the first phase, targeted at 5.5 million primary school pupils in the 18 states is completed.

The benefits of improving school enrolment and completion, cutting the current dropout rate estimated at 30 percent, reducing child-labour; improving child-nutrition and health; increasing local agricultural production and job creation are being fully met.

The feeding plan is holistic in articulation as the community is involved. Residents are engaged as cooks while local farmers are encouraged to grow and supply produce to be used. Instructively, in our opinion, the monies so far released for the plan have been paid directly to the 7,909 cooks in the states, a move that directly empowers the service providers and refinances the local economies while also helping to drive the Central Bank of Nigeria’s plan to ensure that everyone has a Banking Verification Number (BVN).

In line with integrity template of the present administration, transparency in the implementation process of the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) scheme across the nine states of Bauchi, Borno, Cross Rivers, Ekiti, Kwara, Kogi, Niger, Osun and Oyo is giving cause for optimism. States and local councils were involved in the selection of the beneficiaries of the N5, 000 monthly stipends while the Community-Based Targeting (CBT) model of the World Bank was used to identify beneficiaries.

At the moment, the first batch of recipients have started receiving their payments after government released the funds to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS.)   The sum of N10, 000 is currently being paid directly to the CCT beneficiaries for December 2016, and January 2017 while subsequent payments of N10, 000 would be made six times annually.

The youth of a nation represents its future, therefore making the inclusion of unemployed graduates in the social interventions through the N-Power Scheme a salutary one. Already 200,000 out of a projected beneficiary target of half a million unemployed youths have so far been employed and deployed to rural communities as teachers, agricultural extension workers and health support workers in more than 20 states of the federation.

The remaining 300,000 are expected to join the plan before the end of March. Beneficiaries have started receiving their monthly stipend of N30, 000.

In choosing the beneficiaries, efforts were made to ensure gender balancing while physically challenged people were also considered. Available facts show that 46 per cent of the 200,000 selected applicants are females while 1,200 successful applicants are persons with disabilities.

The Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme commenced in November 2016 in collaboration with the Bank of Industry. In it soft loans ranging from N10, 000 to N100, 000 are given to artisans, traders, youth, entrepreneurs and market women among others from 15 states, with a plan to touch over 30,000 this month, and well over a million in a year.

We note that in this SIP scheme the Federal Government is tapping the knowledge, expertise and experience of such global players like the World Bank, DFID, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Imperial College, UK, among others to ensure that planning, execution and monitoring of the programmes met international best practices.