The federal government has said ratification of the National Social Investment Programme,NSIP bill is expected to mitigate poverty, unemployment among the indigent in the country.
The “establishment act” captures legal framework, financing, organizational structure, periodic review among other factors that will ensure sustainability of the scheme.
Director, Legal Services of the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs Disaster Management and Social Development,Barrister Garba Haganawega at a stakeholders consultative workshop on sensitization of the NSIP bill on Wednesday in Abuja said, “The objective of this bill is to provide a legal framework for the bill for the investment program to be sustained.”
According to him “We are in the habit of a new government coming in and shelving the old Government’s programme, but this time around if there is a legal framework in form of an act that established the Programme, it will be tedious for it to be amended.
He added “Another aspect is funding, because funding has always been a problem in the government. So, here, a funding mechanism is provided in it.”So we hope that with this provision, I think the program will be sustained.”
Haganawega disclosed that the bill has reached an advanced stage, adding that the House of Representatives has passed it and that it is now left with the Senate to act on it.
Futhermore,”The bill tends to address the problems of different groups, and categories, it deals with us, women, farmers, etc, so, it covers a wide range of the populace. And so its impact would go a long way in reducing poverty. You know, the real aim and the target is poverty reduction.”
Also, speaking, the national resource person, NSIP, Engr. Umar Bindir, said, “the Bill in this way is to ensure that first, we learn from the mistakes of the past were establishing agencies dedicating an act to the agency, putting them as a standalone self Accounting has its own challenges, particularly when it comes to fighting poverty on a continuous basis.”
“You understand that poverty is really a big problem in Nigeria and therefore the need to have a very serious and effective well structured program to fight poverty or non stop cannot be overemphasized.”
He stated that,”Based on the o directives, the funding and the partnership and the supporting system of the NSIP for sustainability, again is captured in the bill to ensure that international donor partners are encouraged because it is transparent, it is effective, it has a lot of data management and so on and so forth.”
“NSIP has been evolved to actually serve as that tool to just sustain the fight against poverty. Two, if this is true, and it is true because we have seen over the last four or five years, the benefits of implementing NSIP, the way it is structured, the process for institutionalizing this is that you have a law and you have the law to say that this is a structure that is well understood by Nigerians and Nigerians have resolved through their own representation in the National Assembly to sustain the fight of poverty until we literally kill it.
“So this bill is about the structure of the NSIP the operational modalities of the NSIP, the funding methodologies of the NSIP the reporting lines of the NSIP impact measurements of the NSIP and everything to do with the NSIP with the ultimate target of ensuring that we fight poverty in our country,” He said.
