Nigeria’s ministry of humanitarian affairs received N258.4 billion between January and September 2020, out of which it spent N96.3 billion of the sum within the same period. This was contained in a document the ministry submitted to the National Assembly joint committee on poverty alleviation obtained exclusively
About 99 per cent of the total amount spent by the ministry was used for the social investment programmes (NSIP) with the ministry saying it spent about N95.2 billion on the NSIPs between January and September. The NSIP expenditure includes N66.1 billion spent on recurrent expenditure and N29.1 billion spent on capital projects. The NSIPs are the social investment programmes of the Buhari administration, largely aimed at poor, unemployed and disenfranchised Nigerians. The programmes include N-Power for unemployed graduates, Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) for small and micro businesses, Conditional Cash Transfer to poor Nigerians and the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme for public primary school pupils.
After the revision of the 2020 budget due to the shortfall in government revenue as a result of COVID-19 and drop in oil price, a sum of N374.4 billion was appropriated for the NSIP.
This comprised N292 billion as recurrent expenditure, N50 billion as capital expenditure and N32.5 billion as COVID-19 capital spending. The latter was allocated for the provision of cash transfer to “additional 1 million poor Nigerians under the COVID-19 Intervention Fund” and to “cover the development of a Rapid Response Register (RRR) and the provision of N5,000 to target beneficiaries over a period of 12 months.”
Of the N374.4 billion approved for the social programmes, N256 billion had been released as of September, the official document showed. While there have been releases of N219.7 billion for the capital projects and N36.4 billion for the recurrent subheads of the social programmes, “the ministry is yet to receive any release for the implementation of the COVID-19 Cash Transfer,” the document noted.
Source: PremiumTimesNg
