By Kolawole Ojebisi
The House Representatives has asked President Bola Tinubu to to direct the Minister of Finance and the coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, to ensure that all frozen accounts of the National Social Investment Programmes Agency (NSIPA) are unfrozen within 72 hours.
The red chamber made this request on Tuesday noting that granting the request would enable the smooth recommencement of all the NSIPA’s programmes.
The House urged the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, Nentawe Yilwatda, to ensure that all the administrative bottlenecks hindering the smooth operations of all programmes of NSIPA are immediately addressed.
These resolutions followed the adoption of a motion “Need to Unfreeze the Accounts of the NSIPA for the Reactivation of all Social Investment Programmes of the Agency”, jointly sponsored by the Deputy Speaker of the House, Benjamin Okezie Kalu and 20 other House members.
The House also resolved to transmit the resolution to the Senate for concurrence.
Kalu, while moving the motion noted that the NSIPA was established pursuant to the National Social Investment Programme Agency (Establishment) Act, 2023, with the mandate of empowering unemployed persons, vulnerable widows, orphans, children, persons with disabilities, and vulnerable senior citizens, among others.
He said NSIPA oversees critical social intervention programmes such as Grant for Vulnerable Groups, N-Power, the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT), and the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP).
Kalu said the “Renewed Hope Agenda” of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led government emphasised
the mandate of NSIPA to cushion the effect of economic shocks on the poor and the vulnerable.
He said it was disturbing that despite the programmes of NSIPA being vital for poverty alleviation, youth empowerment
and economic inclusivity in Nigeria, the agency’s functionality had been hindered due to administrative bottlenecks, insufficient funding, and frozen accounts.
He said the effort of the government and the laudable programmes of NSIPA were truncated by alleged financial mismanagement by handlers of the programmes leading to the suspension of programmes and freezing of the agency’s account and subsequent investigation by anti-corruption and security agencies.
Kalu expressed worries that the NSIPA frozen account contradicts the president’s mandate on poverty alleviation by hindering and halting social welfare programmes, including conditional cash transfers, small business grants, and school feeding initiatives, thus, undermining economic empowerment initiatives.
According to Kalu following the suspension of the accounts of the NSIPA, the N-Power programme had been so negatively affected that 395,731 beneficiaries were owed outstanding stipends to the tune of N81,315, 440, 000, a fund which he said had already been captured under the 2023 and 2024 amended Appropriation Acts, which will elapse by the end of 2024.
He said it was essential “to act swiftly to resolve the issue to maintain momentum toward the administration’s poverty eradication goals.”
