Contentious opaque cash transfer programmes

There is understandable disbelief in claims by the Jigawa State Government that it shared the monumental sum of N192 billion in seven months to those it referred to as “pregnant women and lactating mothers”. The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has described the claim as outrageous, unbelievable and simply another means of siphoning public funds. The Jigawa State Government claims it spent the money between November 2021 and June 2022 implementing its Maternal and Child Cash Transfer Programme. To nobody’s surprise they could not release any details of beneficiaries, or the bank used to disburse the funds.

The bank’s identity is of vital importance because they claimed to have incurred outrageous “bank charges” of N688 million! What is more unsettling  is that in November 2021, the federal government also claimed to have started disbursing nearly N2 billion under its own Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programme to women in Jigawa considered to be poor and vulnerable.

That’s not all. As long ago as 2020, the federal government claimed to have been spending N1 billion monthly in selected nine local governments in the same Jigawa. It seems inconceivable and totally illogical that though the federal government is broke and continuously borrowing money,  it cannot conceptualise anything better to do with the money than purportedly hand it out in cash to unidentified and indeed unidentifiable persons, and subsidize state governments which do exactly the same thing!

The total mismanagement of the nation’s finances by those in authority is becoming increasingly apparent by the day. Quite absurdly, both federal and state governments claim that the money is being used to “break the cycle of poverty” whereas what it actually does is keep recipients in perpetual virtual destitution! With the educational system in shambles and human capacity development quite evidently not being a priority these days, poverty is being widened and increasingly entrenched in our society.

It’s depressing that governance in Nigeria is no longer about developing human capacity by improving the educational system to produce graduates and school leavers with marketable employment skills, but has been reduced to clueless handing out of cash in the streets: Giving people fish to eat rather than teaching them to fish has become the order of the day. While the Minister for Humanitarian Affairs stoutly defends her penchant for opaque cash handout schemes, the World Bank takes pains to point out that cash transfers are not a panacea for development.

They do not generate essential infrastructure or public services such as roads, hospitals, vaccination programmes, and municipal water supply systems. Nor will they train nurses, teachers or other long-term skilled workers who are essential to promote development. The truth is that cash transfers are not a routine part of governance. They were designed to assist people who are victims of a humanitarian crisis in which opportunities for employment, income and economic production have ceased to exist.

In such circumstances, a short term Cash Transfer Programme (CTP) has been shown to have many benefits, including temporarily reducing poverty, improving nutrition and increasing school enrolment. However, the humanitarian crisis in Nigeria is located in camps for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) not in villages untouched by insurgency.

The World Bank has warned that injecting cash into a community without any commensurate increase in productivity will only lead to inflation in the locality as prices of goods will increase when demand increases without increase in supply. Neither the federal nor state government has been able to overcome the challenges of properly implementing a CTP.

There are problems of accessing cash in time, distance from cash collecting facility, loss of programme identification numbers, delay in payments and unknown time or date for such payments. Available evidence indicates that there are few if any long-term benefits to CTP’s; indeed there are many who believe that such programmes merely encourage laziness and expectation of welfare.

The key to such transfers should be to enable beneficiaries to start their own business and seek a way out of poverty, but the system as practised in Nigeria merely seeks to pacify the poor without uplifting them from poverty. There is also unsettled debate as to why such transfers are targeted and not delivered to all citizens living in extreme poverty.

What is the justification for them being selective by state and local government, especially since CTP’s are prone to the sort of high level corruption which Nigeria has a well-earned reputation for.  The unanswered question is; “are poor Nigerians only located in a particular geo-political graphical region?”  The World Bank has identified five features critical to success of CTP’s. These are comprehensive data, flexible targeting, caution around conditionality’s, use of technology, and partnerships all of which are sub-standard in Nigeria. CCT’s which lack data consolidation, coordination and security measures never meaningfully impact those most in need. There are far better and more transparent means of carrying out CTP’s in Nigeria, especially since the basis for choosing the recipients is opaque. The real issue at stake is the politics of social protection and social change.

Neither federal nor state government has been able to articulate what they expect the impacts of CCT’s to be, over what time period, for which segment of the population and at what cost. The incoming administration must ensure that the sequence of actions is programmed to generate public support rather than breed resentment.