The Bitter Truth About COVID-19 Palliatives, And FG’s Social Intervention Programme

By Kenneth Bua

In the past few days, the social media have been awash with all manner of narratives on the so-called money sharing thing. The narratives were more of sentiments than actual facts with the commentators blatantly confusing the Social Intervention Programme (SIP) with COVID-19 palliatives.

They are two different things. Though I’m not a government’s spokesman, I feel a sense of duty to Fatherland to bring the issue into proper perspective..

Though the SIP is a Federal Government initiative, the government does not intervene directly in its implementation; it does so with and through the states under the supervision of the National Social Intervention Programme Office (NSIO) in the Vice President’s office. The programmes include the Conditional Cash Transfer Programme, the National School Feeding Programme, N-Power and other the entrepreneurship programmes, the trader/farmer money programme, etc.

Recall that for some reasons, some states were slow in responding to these programmes. Some did not respond at all; and the Federal Government  has no constitutional authority to force any state to participate. If some states decided to buy into the programme and are enjoying it, and those that refused to or were slow to embrace it are not enjoying, how is that the fault of the federal administration?

In the case of the School Feeding Programme, while some states diligently executed their own, with their counterpart funds, some embezzled even the Federal Government share of the money and collapsed the programmes in their states. Programmes like the school feeding are executed by the Federal Government with the states contributing their own share (counterpart funding). If a state government was unwilling to participate, why would people now be talking about selective execution of what has been running for more than two years?

The money some people are now claiming to be palliatives are indeed not COVID-19 palliatives but programmes that have been ongoing. The problem we have in this country, even with supposedly exposed persons, is that we are so lazy to ask appropriate questions from appropriate quarters to get genuine answers. Why can’t those who are bothered ask their respective state governments why their states are excluded in the sharing of the ‘palliatives’?

It is because people are adept at always point accusing fingers at the Federal Government while the state governments and the governors get away with blue murder.

The same people who were mocking the North of having the largest number of poor people are the same complaining that the endemic area of the poor  are getting assistance for their status. Are we now accepting that we are all poor?

The COVID-19 fund, raised by public spirited individuals and corporate entities, are not domiciled with or exclusively disbursed by the Federal Government’s Task Force on COVID-19. The fund is reportedly domiciled with the Central Bank and, according to reports, would be administered by a Committee set up by a group working with and supervised by the principal donors.

Yes, we’ve had years of the locust in this country but that should not make us so paranoid that we lose our sense of reasoning and interrogation. That does not mean we should swallow without chewing.

There are people who are so adept in that look very much like drugs, but drugs should be taken with appropriate diagnosis and prescriptions. We should consume even media products with care!

Often times we are told that an elephant is coming, and before it arrives some people have shouted themselves hoarse by just sighting a tree trunk that looks like an elephant tusk! A word is enough for the wise