A social commentator, Mustapha Kabir Soron Dinki has condemned the disengagement of the Federal Government’s N-Power beneficiaries despite challenges Nigerians are facing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak.
Afriupdate reports that Dinki made this known on Wednesday, September 16th, 2020 via his known micro-blogging account Twitter.
He said: “the worst part of N-Power programme is the attempt to throw 500 thousand children of poor whom were strangulated by Coronavirus to labour market to restart wandering in the society”.
As seen below, Dinki also added that; “if occurred, the scheme has no tangible impacts”.
https://twitter.com/DinkiMk/status/1306141722930540544?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1306141722930540544%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fallnews.ng%2Fnews%2Fn-power-nigerian-social-commentator-bares-thoughts-on-exit-of-batch-a-b-beneficiaries
Recall that Batch A beneficiaries exited the programme on June 30 after four years in the famed scheme, while their Batch B counterparts officially made their exit on July 31st – after two years.
The N-Power was introduced in 2016 as part of President Buhari’s National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), aimed at curbing the incessant increase of unemployment and poverty in the country.
Meanwhile, the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, on Friday, August 14, 2020, released the statistics on unemployment for the second quarter, Q2, of 2020 after a long hiatus since the third quarter, Q3, of 2018. The percentage of unemployed people stands at 27.1 per cent. The last report which was released in 2018 showed the rate at 23 per cent. Apparently, within two years, the unemployment rate in Nigeria rose by four per cent.
This points to – among other things – the fact that President Muhammadu Buhari’s social and welfare programmes for the unemployed and less privileged, which are touted in various fora as a panacea to the perennial unemployment problem in Nigeria have not been effective.
As part of his manifestoes in 2015, he promised to provide three million jobs yearly. In order to fulfill this promise, he rolled out the N-Power programme, Conditional Cash Transfer Scheme, CCTS, and Special Public Works, SPW, programme among others.
In corroborating the success of the social and welfare programmes, Mrs. Maryam Uwais, Special Adviser to President Buhari on National Social Welfare recently said that over 11.5 million people have already benefited directly from all the programmes and about nine million others have benefited indirectly.
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Some proponents might argue that government’s social programmes have greatly reduced unemployment rate thereby, faulting this fact and attributing the latest increase in unemployment rate to the ripple effects of COVID-19 pandemic. But looking at the statistics, instead of a consistent reduction in unemployment rate, a look at the unemployment data prior to the COVID-19 pandemic shows a steady rise in unemployment.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, unemployment rate rose steadily from 16.20 per cent in the second quarter, Q2, of 2017 to 23.13 per cent in the third quarter, Q3, of 2018. Going by the key indicators of rapid increase in unemployment rate, it is safe to admit that social programmes initiated by President Buhari since 2015, as plausible as they seem have failed to reduce the unemployment rate.
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