Civil Empowerment and Rule of Law Support Initiative, CERLSI, has repeated a call it made to President Buhari, to order a probe on the activities of the Social Investment Program and allied ‘empowerment’ schemes if there will be any legitimate tinge to his anti-corruption stance in Nigeria.
Bob MajiriOghene Etemiku, CERLSI deputy executive director, said that the call becomes expedient in the light of revelations from Aisha Buhari, wife of Nigeria’s president, that the Social Investment Program, SIP, of the Federal Government under her husband was twisted in favor of certain sections of the country.
“Sometime in January, CERLSI called on the Federal Government of Nigeria to review all so-called ‘empowerment’ programmes in Nigeria. We made this call at the onset of the 2019 presidential campaigns when there were speculations that monies budgeted for the Social Investment Program, and all other ‘empowerment’ programs were being doled out by Mr Vice President as ‘trader money’ – a euphemism for vote buying’. Because of suspicions that the SIP program had a political tone to it, CERLSI therefore called on the Federal Government to review and de-politicize access to loans by putting the distribution/disbursement of such loans in the hands of institutions with a transparent and accountable profile,” Mr Etemiku said.”With the outcry by such an auspicious personality as Mrs Aisha Buhari, that the program favors only a section of Nigeria, CERLSI stands vindicated that ALL empowerment schemes in Nigeria have issues with being transparent and fall short of accountable parameters especially in the manner and tenor and undertone guiding the ‘disbursement’ of those monies.”
CERLSI reiterates that true empowerment does not come with primitive solutions like throwing monies at problems. Such unsustainable programs and schemes ultimately achieve temporal palliative. True and lasting empowerment comes from providing an enabling environment wherein every Nigerian can benefit.
“Consequently, we reiterate our earlier call on the Buhari administration to restructure the modus operandi of the inequitable distribution of those monies for the sake of posterity. Mr President, probe the SIP and bring sanity to your anti-corruption campaign,” Mr Etemiku said.
