There is no gainsaying the fact that the much-flaunted Special Public Works Programme (SPWP) has failed in meeting its main objectives. Conceived as a palliative mechanism of sorts, President Muhammadu Buhari had, over a year ago, approved the employment of 774,000 artisans and unemployed youth into the programme across the 774 local government areas in the country.
Originally meant to provide succour to the beneficiaries in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the attendant lockdowns, which paralysed commercial and other business activities throughout the country, the programme was later marred by political manipulations, with members of the National Assembly fighting over quotas to be allocated to them.
The struggle between members of the National Assembly and the supervising ministry over the mode of selection of the beneficiaries was the first challenge faced by the programme. Once that was resolved, manipulations and unnecessary backdoor selection of beneficiaries set in, even as the programme was turned to another job-for-the-boys and reward for party loyalty.
The immediate past Director-General of the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), Dr Ladan Argungu, was a victim of the intense lobbying and manipulation as he was booted out of office for allegedly tampering with the approved list of beneficiaries.
“There were attempts at embarking on a ‘second list’, which was why the immediate former Director-General was removed. When I saw that, I complained to Mr President that the programme might fail because people did not follow the laid down guidelines…,” Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo, was quoted as saying.
Argungu’s sack, however, has not really sanitised the selection process and the programme as a whole.
It is sad to note, and in fact, a shame, that over a year after the three-month programme was initiated, the Federal Government is still finding it difficult to pay a paltry N60,000 promised to each of the beneficiaries at N20,000 per month . Yet, the same government is considering an extension of a programme which aims and objectives have been defeated by bureaucratic bottlenecks and intense politicisation.
More shameful is the fact that despite all the vaunting, noise-making and politicisation of the programme, Keyamo shocked Nigerians when he disclosed that the Federal Government was yet to pay the sum of N7.3 billion to the remaining beneficiaries of SPWP, which is directly under the NDE.
The minister made the shocking disclosure while defending the budget of his ministry before the Senate Committee on Labour and Productivity last month in Abuja.
Vice-Chairman of the committee, Senator Kabiru Barkiya, had taken the minister up, saying, “In my state, Katsina, some of the beneficiaries were asked to open an account with a bank that has no branch in the state.”
Keyamo, however, went on the defensive. “People who complained they did not get paid were not on the list that the supervising minister approved. The allegation that I hijacked the list does not make sense because I am the supervising minister of the NDE. The buck stops on my table. While I am the one who will choose those that will be on the list, it is my job to set the policy on how to choose the beneficiaries,” he was quoted as saying.
The minister also laid the blame on bank issues, while promising that all payments would be disbursed to the beneficiaries before the end of the year. The year is almost running to an end now and there is no indication that the outstanding payment will be disbursed.
This is really worrisome, even with the revelation by the Director-General of the NDE, Abubakar Fikpo, that the N52 billion appropriated for the scheme was domiciled in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), which disburses money to the beneficiaries through selected commercial banks.
“It is the Accountant General that instructs the CBN and then they effect the payment, which is why sometimes we experience failed payments,” Fikpo had said, adding, “We only intervene in the process when payment fails. We then communicate with the beneficiaries to sort out the issue with their banks.”
Now that payment to some of the beneficiaries has failed woefully and the government is still making excuses over what was supposed to serve as a palliative, one year after, we wonder what the CBN is still waiting for.
Just like every other government programme, the SPWP has been praised to high heavens by government apologists and co-travellers in the propaganda train, despite the fact that it has totally failed to achieve its objectives. The issue of trust, which has been a major challenge for the current administration, is also playing out with the implementation of the programme.
Nigerians can now begin to see why unemployment is fast rising in the country, especially among the teeming youth. When the government cannot successfully implement a job creation programme that is paying peanuts to beneficiaries, we wonder how such government will be able to provide sustainable, dignifying and well- paying jobs to its increasingly growing army of unemployed youth in the country.
We therefore call on the minister to urgently do the needful by liaising with the CBN towards ensuring that backlogs of unpaid allowances are paid to the beneficiaries across the country before the end of the year. We also call for a total overhaul of the programme to serve the purposes for which it was meant before embarking on another round of enlistment.
With youth unemployment in the country currently standing at over 42 per cent, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, we call on the Federal Government to step up its game and provide dignifying and sustainable employment to the youth instead of the so-called palliatives that are always hijacked by the political class without benefitting the vulnerable masses for which they are meant.
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