By Dr. Ahmed Adamu
It is a welcome development that the government planned to spend
N500 billion to implement its social intervention programmes to ease the
economic condition in the country. Without going deep into the detail of these
programmes, this article raised some issues that need to be addressed to
ensure effectiveness and inclusiveness of the programmes. The opportunity cost
of this investment is the additional investment in the power sector. So for not
investing the money in the power sector, there must be compelling efficiency
and higher multiplier effects from these social interventions. So, this article
aims to maximize the returns from these interventions by raising some issues
that required to be reviewed.
There are some perceived flaws associated to these programmes,
which if not addressed will undermine the success of this intervention. First,
the Government shall not be hasty in implementing programmes without proper
preparations. Too much pressure to do something now or to score political
credit can make government to make bad decisions. It is better to make it
better than to make it quick.
The first issue is regarding the application process, which
is online. Online applications are not always transparent and can give room for
unnecessary exploitations, as the computer cannot ascertain the validity of the
information provided. Many young applicants who may not be qualified to
participate in these programmes will apply and eventually be selected. This
means that, some youths who may already have jobs or are already engaged may
still exploit these opportunities, and there by denying others who are in
serious economic hardship the chance. This causes distortion or misplacement of
resources, and will not enable achievement of the set objective.
To address this problem, there is need for a comprehensive Survey
that will report on the poverty and unemployment demography in the country
before implementing such programmes. There should be a specific database that
covey status information of the poor youths clustered based on gender, state,
location, physical ability, marriage status, age, qualification, etc. These
data should be independently collected to genuinely ascertain the economic
conditions of the respondents. The local and traditional institutions should
support in ascertaining the information provided by each respondent. This will
enable the government to plan for each individual how much he/she may be
required to be helped to get out of poverty. The database will collect
information on the persons’ preferred level of support and areas of intervention.
With the help of this database, the programme will be more
targeted, and specific individuals will receive the suitable and preferable
support. Each amount will be allocated strategically based on the information
available. Consequently, the participants will not be forced to embrace new
economic venture, as they are being supported in their chosen economic
activity. This will enable appropriate placement of the resources and will make
it more inclusive and easily trackable.
There is also need for some approved indicators and targets
that can be used to assess the impact of the investment on each individual.
Some of these indicators could be the money spent per day, quality and number
of meals per day, clothes, health, etc. The development of the database and
evaluation of the project can easily be implemented while engaging other members
of the society. For example, University staffs and their students can help in
collecting this database and tracking success in each ward. The academic staffs
are reliable since they have proved their integrity for effectively discharging
a more sensitive responsibility of returning election results in the last
elections. So, they can be trusted to compile and report this database and
develop the targets and indicators, as well as to track success of the programmes.
Another issue relating to the online registration process is
its exclusivity. Online applications automatically exclude those who cannot
have access to computer or internet, or the required skills to operate the
computer. There are graduates who still cannot operate computer or use
internet. There are high chances of ineligible youths registering for this
programme, which means youths who are doing well economically may still want to
exploit this opportunity and deny other qualified youths the chance, as earlier
highlighted.
So, it is better to make the registration offline, just like
the voters registration process. This will make it inclusive as youths who may
not have the money to buy internet data or do not have the computer operating
skills can still be registered.
The programmes also gave more emphasis to graduate
unemployed, rather than non-graduate unemployed who have less chances of
becoming employed. 500, 000 graduate unemployed will benefit from these
programmes and only 100,000 non-graduate unemployed will benefit from it. The
proportion should have been equal at least, by adding more slots for the
non-graduate applicants. The programmes were well crafted to provide skills for
the unemployed, which is commendable. The Nigerian economy requires more of
skilled and efficient labour forces, which will help in transforming the
economy. Therefore, the graduate applicants should be strongly encouraged to
apply for skilled based training, rather than just teaching training.
One of the irresistible questions has to do with the
sustainability of the programme, will these programmes be rolling over again?
There is no clear sustainable plan yet. Some of the participants will be
motivated by the monetary benefits attached to it, instead of the value
addition of improving skills and work experience, and once the monetary benefits
seized, they may likely abandon their
skills, and will start looking for other jobs that give them money. So, the
programme should incorporate reorientation programmes that will change the
mindset of the participants, so that they can value skills and self-reliance,
not immediate monetary benefit. This will help them in using their acquired
skills to set up owned businesses, without waiting for others to employ them
again.
Specifically for the Teacher Corps Programme, the
participants will be provided with some computing devices to help with their
specific engagement and information for their continuous training and
development. This particular innovation should be extended to the permanent
teachers and existing workers in agricultural extension and health services. The
permanent teachers who will train the Teacher Corps Trainees need to be trained
on better teaching skills and improve their knowledge too, so that they can
train the teacher trainees effectively.
The programme also should be accompanied with some policies
that will recognise and professionalised small skilled labour. To avoid
marginalisation and contempt of small skilled businesses, there is need to
count those small skilled jobs as professional jobs and its wages regulated
and/or standardised. This will attract more young people to acquire skills and
engage in small skilled businesses. It will encourage and motivate the
participants to stick to their acquired skills.
On the feeding programme, the government will have to
consider feeding the teachers as well, as the teachers too are hungry. And once
food is provided in the schools, then all the Almajiris will drop their bowls
and join schools, but the question is, do the schools have the required
infrastructures and manpower to accommodate the trooping new entrants, and will
it be sustainable? If the feeding budget is for 100 pupils per classroom, once
the feeding programme commenced, the number of pupils in classrooms may
increase to 200, which bring about the question of whether government can spend
extra to feed the increasing number of pupils in schools.
Another concern has to do with process of the feeding. Who
will cook the food? How efficient and sufficient will the feeding be? We have
seen in IDP camps where huge amount of money is spent on feeding, but the IDPs
get little or nothing of the food. Even if this feeding programme must be
implemented, the contract for cooking the food should be given to the poor parents
to empower them, so that they can afford to sponsor the children for post
primary school education.
I totally don’t think the feeding programme will help. The
priority in the educational sector is not only the quantity but the quality.
The feeding programme will virtually put almost all children back to school,
but how many more classrooms, qualified teachers and infrastructures can
government put to the schools. If there is no quality in putting people back to
school, then the investment will be a loss as the spending will outweigh the
resultant benefits. There are children of well doing parents, who get adequate
feeding, and will still unnecessarily benefit from the feeding programme. So
the feeding programme will subsidize even the middle class and rich parents.
So, the investment in the feeding programme will be misplaced.
Generally, I recommend that the feeding programme be stalled
or postponed, the money budgeted for this programme should be invested on the poor
parents who cannot send their children to school or who cannot feed their
school children. The problem was that children refuse to go to school because
they have to hawk or help parents to bring money to the family. So, if the
family is empowered economically, the children will be spared and will start
going to school, and they will bring food to school. So, the objective should
be to give job to the poor parents.
The government should train people how to catch fish, rather
than giving them the fish. If the children receive fish today, during holiday
or when they graduated, who will give them the fish? So, if the parents are
empowered to catch fish, they can always give fish to their children.
Finally, the intervention programmes should invest in
training young people in energy solution businesses, like solar panel
production, installations and maintenance. There should be some selected young
trainees who will be trained to engage in advocacies and training others for
best practices in energy conservation. This will give them the skills to help
address energy crisis in the country.
Dr. Ahmed Adamu,
Petroleum Economist and
Development Expert,
Pioneer Global Chairperson of
the Commonwealth Youth Council,
University Lecturer (Economics)
at Umaru Musa Yar’adua University Katsina.
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