[Updated] NEC dumps Buhari’s social investment register, says it lacks integrity

▪︎ To reduce the cost of governance
▪︎To review minimum wage
▪︎To release 250,000mt of grains to states
▪︎ FAAC to share N900bn, not N2trn

The National Economic Council (NEC), presided over by Vice President Kashim Shettima, has dumped the National Social Register, one of Muhammadu Buhari administration’s responses to poverty, for lack of integrity.

The Council instead proposed implementing a cash transfer programme for states based on their social registers and a cash reward policy for public servants for six months.

This was disclosed at the briefing of State House Correspondents at the end of the over five hours meeting by governors of Anambra State, Charles Soludo, Bauchi, Bala Mohammed and Ogun, Dapo Abiodun.

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The Anambra governor affirmed that NEC deliberated on ways to cushion the impact of the recent petroleum subsidy removal.

According to Soludo, NEC resolved that the states should come up with their own registers using formal and informal means to develop it, assuring that all beneficiaries at the subnational level could easily be accessed that way.

He said: “In relation to the social register that has been mentioned. I think at the council today, there was almost unanimity among members that 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 whether it is for the most vulnerable group, and so on and so forth.

“But let me even give you an example. If you are to just think about it. Let’s talk about a social register, and that is distributing things through the social register by digital means, implying that these people already have account numbers and they have phone numbers. Maybe they must be talking about some other people, not Nigerians. The poorest 25 percentile of Nigerians are largely, if not totally unbanked, and they don’t have access to your telephone. If it is of the poorest of the poor of our society.

“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 . People go to those villages and ask where those people are and people don’t show up. This is stress testing it.

“And we think that we need to go down, back to the drawing board and if you are delivering any such national or federal programme from Abuja, it needs to be delivered via the constituent governments that are there using their own format and mechanisms to generate the register that is comprehensive, 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 National Register as either bogus. Some described it as phantom. Some described it in 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.”

The council also emphasised the importance of paying outstanding liabilities of public servants, including pensions and gratuities, to alleviate their hardships.

Ogun Governor said the Council also agreed that the government will focus on funding Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) with single-digit interest rates to support business growth.

Abiodun said they also agreed to the immediate implementation of the Energy Transition Plan was discussed, focusing on transitioning to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) for mass transit vehicles to reduce reliance on petrol.

The council stated that government aims to set up manufacturing and assembly plants for electric vehicles (EVs) in each zone in the country in the long term, but in the meantime, they encourage the conversion to CNG to create employment and reduce petrol dependency.

Council agreed that food items grains and fertilisers are to be distributed by state governments at the rate acquired from National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and states are urged to double down on energy transition plans in the transport sector.

The Bauchi governor explained that the council addressed food security and food price escalation by allocating buffer stocks of grains for distribution to states, which they can choose to sell them at a subsidised rate or distribute them for free to ease the burden on citizens.

Speaking more on the reduction of cost of governance, Soludo said, “I think it’s an omnibus concept, and it’s not something you sit down in a meeting to legislate for each and every state. But the fact that they council recognises 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, someone gave an example of a state governor going with 20 something vehicles in a convoy and all these have to be fueled, and so on and so forth.

“And the fact that even amongst ourselves almost like in a peer review kind of setting we are talking for ourselves. Hey, gentlemen, we would 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 so forth and knockoff the waste and the irrelevances so to speak.

“I mean, I like will to give you a simple example we are not going to legislate for everybody, everybody is to go and look into his mind. When I assumed office, for example, 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 on a monthly basis. This is just an illustration.

“It’s a thing that we’re persuading each and every one of us to look into, that we should check our books and look ourselves in the mirror and move with the times.  So it is not that the council sat and began to prescribe. You have 12 number of advisors or five… we didn’t get to that, but each person will do that.”

Soludo said the council also mentioned the possibility of negotiating a new minimum wage over time, while clarifying that the federal allocation to be shared between federating units for June will be around N900 billion, not the speculated N2 trillion, to moderate its impact on the system.

Soludo said on review of the minimum wage currently at N30,000.

He said: “As part of those recommendations over the medium, longer term, and that is the possibility of negotiating a new minimum wage. That obviously will be on the table. But that has to be negotiated through the appropriate structures for doing that over time.”

Abiodun added, “Yes, we discussed the issue of wage increases, but we looked at that as a medium to long term measure. We’re more focused on the immediate term measures that will bring succor to  the lives of people.”

The Acting Central Bank of Nigeria, Folashodun Shonubi, said Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue in his presentation on what they have done so far as regards the level of collections.

He said: “It was nice to know that they are ahead of their target for half year. And we expect that before or by the time the year ends they would exceed. They also gave us some idea of what next year should be like from them. And from this year, we hope to make some N10 trillion. It is planning that next year, we should be able to work with all the agencies to provide N25 trillion as their contribution to the national coffers.”