In line with its objectives to directly impact almost ten million lives through the National Social Investment Programmes (NSIP) a total of 6,802,049 Nigerians are already benefiting directly from all the programmes as at January 2018. This figure represents almost 70% fulfillment rate of the 9.76m targeted under the Buhari Social Investment Programmes. In addition to the direct beneficiaries, 1, 750, 500 other persons comprising cooks, farmers, Poor and Vulnerable Household members, have also been impacted as secondary beneficiaries of the programmes. Besides, every state of the federation and the FCT are participating actively in at least one of the Social Investment Programmes.
A breakdown of the programme’s impact indicates that 439,859 Poor and Vulnerable Households have been identified and enumerated in 5,538 communities from 233 LGAs in 23 states, under the National Social Safety Net Programme from which they will be drawing benefits including cash transfers. Also 297,973 caregivers in eligible households are already benefiting from the cash transfer programme. Under the Home-Grown School Feeding Programme, 6,044,625 pupils are being fed daily in 20 states by 61,352 cooks in 33,981 primary schools. Over 246 million meals have been served so far, while feeding of pupils in six more states is scheduled to start in the first quarter of 2018, meaning 26 states would then be benefiting from the feeding programme.
In the other components of the programme, a total of 259,451 loans have been successfully disbursed through the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) across 36 states and FCT, out of 478,388 eligible beneficiaries processed. Under the N-Power scheme – the volunteer & job creation programme of the Buhari administration, about 200,000 volunteer graduates have been successfully deployed and are being paid in 36 states and FCT, while 300,000 graduate volunteers have been pre-selected in the next round of the programme. When fully engaged half a million unemployed graduates would have been engaged receiving their N30,000 monthly stipend and equipped with an electronic device that prepares them with new skills and ideas beyond the duration of the N-Power schemes.
The Volunteers are being engaged for N-Power Agro (the agricultural component of the job creation scheme), N-Power Tax (designed to support the FIRS), N-Power Health (to work as community health workers) and the N-Power Teach (to work in schools). The other components of the N-Power programme include the N-Build and the N-Knowledge programmes. Under the N-Build, 10,000 artisans have been verified, supplied with toolboxes for 3 months training and assigned to 160 skills centres in 22 states, while 20,000 persons are about to take off in hardware, creativity and software category trainings. In addition, the cost-benefit analysis of the programme indicates that a careful implementation of the programmes would deliver a positive return to the country’s GDP both in the short and long terms.
