President Muhammadu Buhari, has on Wednesday, said that the federal
government signed the Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, with the World
bank and Switzerland to lift people out of poverty, Vanguard reports.
President Buhari made this known at the inception meeting of the
Mantra project on asset recovery and development in Nigeria by Africa
Network for Environment and Economic Justice, ANEEJ in collaboration
with World bank and Switzerland government.
The President, who was represented at the occasion by his Special
Adviser on Justice sector reform, Barr. Juliet Ibekaku-Nwagwu, said the
choice of investing the recovered loots in the Social Investment
programme as captured in the MoU was taken to address the problem of
extreme poverty and create social equality among Nigerians.
The president said the administration is committed in partnering
with both local and internal partners to ensure transparency and
accountability in the management of the recovered loots.
‘‘We are determined to ensure all returned assets back to Nigeria are well utilized.
‘‘When it is returned we want Nigerians to know where this
money is being invested in and that is why we signed the memorandum for
understanding on the management of the returned assets from Switzerland.
“The $322million that was returned to Nigeria, we invited Civil
Society Organisations to be part of the negotiation. After the
negotiation by Nigeria with World bank and Switzerland, we signed that
memorandum to make sure that everybody can monitor the use of the funds.
‘‘The use of the funds to be applied to Social Investments,
particularly to targeted cash transfer is to lift people out of poverty.
We know people who are today in this country that wake up in the
morning and don’t even know where to get their meal from. I’m sure
you’ve experienced people within your communities so this whole project
is to address that problem to create social equality, to provide
opportunity.
‘‘There are several countries in Africa where this project has
been implemented and it has worked perfectly well, so we are using
international standards developed by the World bank. The idea is if we
can lift one person out of a household out of poverty, it will
inevitably affect the entire family.
‘‘A woman was being paid five thousand naira consistently over
time when this program started in 2016, the money she has been able to
use it to buy cassava, she’s able to process cassava, she’s now selling
garri. What it means is that every day she’s sure that her family will
have something to eat and so we want that to happen to several millions
of Nigerians, who are living below poverty line today.’’
Recall that the federal government’s Social Investment programme
started in 2016 with the federal government budget. In 2016, the federal
government budgeted N500 billion to support the social investment
schemes across the country.
It started with the Northeast due to the problem with the zone,
where many people were displaced and so many people could not even go to
their farms.
According to the AGF, all the 36 states of the federation today
have signed onto the social investment program. The program is expected
to be launched this July which will see the disbursement of the $322
million Abacha’s loot from Switzerland.
However, she said the government is currently working on deployment
of the social electronic platform that would help government and the
public monitor the disbursement process.