Don’t politicise NSIP scheme, beneficiaries tell Saraki, others

NIGERIAN Social Investment Programme (NSIP) beneficiaries yesterday cautioned Senate President Bukola Saraki and other politicians against politicising the programme.

The beneficiaries said the NSIP has been a life-saver for many of them.

Saraki had reportedly described the scheme as an attempt by President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to curry voters to his side in 2019.

Addressing reporters yesterday in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, spokesperson of the beneficiaries Danwahab Ambali said no fewer than 5,000 people had benefitted from the first phase of N-Power in Kwara State.

Ambali said: “With me here are beneficiaries of the Conditional Cash Transfer and Tradermoni, all part of the NSIP.  It is important to state here that the NSIP scheme to us has been nothing, but a life-saver.

“I graduated from the University of Ilorin with a Bachelor of Science degree in Anatomy in 2009. For six years, I was without any gainful employment until 2016 when I became an N-Power volunteer.

“My participation in the programme has really impacted my life, because it was through N-Power that I got the money to do my M.Sc programme and also enhance my personal skills in other areas.

“Like me, N-Power and other SIP programmes have improved the lives of many that I know in Kwara State here.

“Here with me is Mrs. Memunat Ismaila, who was widowed since 1996 with no help from anywhere. To feed her children, she became a petty trader, selling pepper. She kept struggling for her small business to survive, until respite came when she got the first tranche of Conditional Cash Transfer, which she put into her business. She now lives a more dignified life with her children.

“Ibrahim Moshood here is a fashion designer, who was in need of a shop. It was the Tradermoni he got that he used to get a shop and standardised his business. So, the Social Investment Programme is working for us.”

He added: “It is, therefore, to defend the integrity of the NSIP programme so that others can benefit that we have found it necessary to come out openly to say that we do not believe that the NSIP is tailored towards any political gain. We say this because we heard Dr. Saraki say that the NSIP is nothing but a ‘systematic vote-buying for the 2019 election’.

Ambali said Saraki’s claim was not true since many of the beneficiaries did  not start benefiting from the programme because the 2019 elections is approaching.

“Like I said before, I became a beneficiary in 2016. Some of my colleagues got in in 2017. In fact, Senator Saraki himself had praised the programme in the past, and some of his aides indeed tried unsuccessfully to nominate people into the programme, claiming that they were APC before they defected.”