During the 2015 presidential elections campaign, the All Progressives’ Congress (APC) on its way to winning the election made a promise to 25 million vulnerable Nigerians a monthly stipend of N5000 for two years.
However, they did not provide specifics on how an APC government will go ahead to execute this social security scheme, and its refusal to participate in election debates helped it avoid going into details. But it still did not stop voters from being excited – for decades, Nigerians have decried the absence of a social security program, as the closest we have had to that is a civil service which is bloated, as governments employed people without consideration to productivity, which is symptomatic of oil-dependent countries.
Close to eight months into the Buhari administration, the social security program is far from taking off. Even worse is that there is still no clarity on for whom exactly the social protection scheme is for: while the Minister of State for Labour, James Ocholi said the stipends is for unemployed Nigerians, the Minister for Information, Lai Mohammed said that it is targeted at vulnerable Nigerians.
As it stands, the sum of N500 billion has been allocated for social programs in the 2016 Appropriation Bill to cover the school feeding program and a conditional cash transfer scheme, which is the monthly stipends for vulnerable or unemployed Nigerians.
However, a lot of Nigerians have expressed concern with how this social program will be implemented, given that Nigeria has no data on which Nigerians are unemployed or vulnerable.
There are fears that the beneficiaries of the scheme could be those who are neither unemployed nor vulnerable given the dearth of reliable data. These are fears that this newspaper is inclined to say are very valid.
But that does not mean that the social program should be ditched, as there are ways to make it work.
Over the past ten years, there have been numerous biometric data collections – from new driving license issuance programs, international passports, SIM card registrations and most recently, the Bank Verification Number (BVN) registration schemes. These data once harmonized can provide a trove of data through which those who are unemployed and/or vulnerable can be identified.
For instance, for persons to be paid, a bank account will be needed through which the stipend can be paid. All bank accounts of a beneficiary can be monitored to see if they receive income regularly from other sources.
This will prevent fraud and will also deepen penetration of banking services, as many of the beneficiaries are likely to not have bank accounts currently.
The Federal Government should instruct the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to take ownership of the various biometric databases and harmonize them, going by its enabling Act 2007 which empowers it “to create, manage, maintain and operate the National Identity Database established under Section 14… including the harmonisation and integration of existing identification databases in government agencies and integrating them into the National Identity Database.”
It will also do well to back up such a move with a bill to the National Assembly for a Data Protection Act in a way that protects the sensitive information of residents and citizens of Nigeria and does not also threaten their freedom of expression. The lack of data protection and privacy laws creates a lacuna that can be exploited by individuals, companies and governments themselves.
In doing so, the benefits of such will go beyond just the social program of the Federal Government but will also be used to have a record of the number of Nigerians without needing to embark on expensive censuses that are always fraught with errors and political controversies. The database can also be used to fight crime through tracking down suspects from their biometric information.
It is important that the Federal Government expedite action in this direction in order to start commencing this scheme and in a manner that is done properly lest it continues to lose popularity over the perception by the electorate that it is not intent on fulfilling its campaign promise.
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