The House Representatives on Tuesday urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to mandate 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 to enable the smooth recommencement of all the agency’s programmes.
The House also resolved that the minister should ensure the release of funds to NSIPA for the payment of outstanding stipends owed to 395,731 N-Power beneficiaries nationwide without further delay.
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 removed.
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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 members.
This is as 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 raised concerns that the smooth operations of the programmes and the fulfillment of the mandate of NSIPA had been hindered due to the suspension (freezing) of the accounts of the agency and other administrative bottlenecks, which has remained in force even more than 3 months after the President reconstituted the new management of NSIPA.
He 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.
He also noted that 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 restoring NSIPA’s account aligned with the President’s vision by ensuring that poverty alleviation efforts remain effective, efficient, and impactful.
He said it was essential “to act swiftly to resolve the issue to maintain momentum toward the administration’s poverty eradication goals.”
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