By Lawrence Olaoye
The Presidency has said that the implementation of the Social Investment Programme (SIP) of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration was not for political gains but to reduce poverty and redistribute wealth in the country.
Fielding questions from State House Correspondents at a Press Conference organised by Office of the National Social Investment Office (NSIO), Barrister Ismaeel Ahmed l, Senior Special to the President on Social Investment, said the implementation of the program, especially the school feeding program, has helped reduced the number of out-of-school children.
He stressed that the President and his Vice, Yemi Osinbajo, are committed to the welfare of the people rather than fixating on winning elections.
Asked what the Buhari administration intended to leverage on as one of the biggest successes on SIP during campaigns, Ismaeel said “I think even though this is a political promise, it came from a manifesto of a political party. The implementation is far from being just political, the implementation is for all Nigerians. When we set out and were campaigning in 2015 we didn’t say what we are going to do is going to be solely for political reasons.
“The president and Vice President are more committed to the electorates rather than elections and are concerned about the future rather than just Next one year. So this is entirely about the country itself and not just for political reasons.
“But, if you are talking about what we can leverage on, there are a lot of successes in SIP. We are engaging 73,000 cooks that are growing rural economy. They are buying from local farmers therefore this is growing the rural economy. They are feeding some children and we have reduced the number of out of school children in the last one or two years we have been implementing the school feeding Programme. Engaging 200,000 young unemployed graduates that are receiving N30,000 a month. Those are successes in itself.
“So if we are looking for things to leverage on, we have a lot of success stories to tell but that is not the entirety and essence of this Programme. The essence of this Programme is to reduce poverty and to distribute wealth as much as we can. The president and Vice President careless about the elections like I said, they care more about the citizens.”
Miriam Uwais, also an aide to the President on SIP, explained that the NSIO took painstaking efforts to seed out the extremely poor out of the estimated 80 poor people in the country.
She said the programme had already captured about 30 percent of the total number of the poor in the country in collaboration with the state governments.
