No fewer than 12 million Nigerians have benefited from the various life-touching programmes of the Federal Government.
These are School Feeding, Cash Transfer, N-Power, and Small and Medium Enterprises otherwise known as Market Money.
In an exclusive interview with the publisher of Straightnews on Tuesday, Mrs Maryam Uwais, Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on Social Investments said her office has made a direct impact on the lives of at least 12 million Nigerians.
Mrs Uwais who was one of the resource persons at the Social Media Week held in Lagos said: “When you consider the family index- the farmers, cooks, the communities- we were still counting 44 million. Hardly any community that has not felt the impact of our programme. What Nigerians need to do is to key into these programmes and to bring in all sorts of funding so that we will be able to have a future index for our country to succeed.”
She listed the challenges facing her office to include “the dearth of infrastructure for us to be able to reach the last man are and the fact that many our beneficiaries are semi-illiterate; they are exploited by other people who feel they are smart. We had a dearth of funding (we did not have a lot of money). There are a number of issues- feedback, monitoring we are trying to get right.”
Earlier speaking on the topic Impact Investing and Investing of SDGs in Nigeria, the special adviser had said 72 countries have attained SDGs largely through government funding.
“We need to impact assessment and international network. The budget is the easiest thing to do. The politicians prioritise what they need to benefit themselves. We are unable to harness all the energies. CBN should make minimum requirements for small-scale businesses to obtain loans. There should be a synergy between the private sector and the government to ginger social investments.”
Also, Mrs Adesuwa Ighile, Special Assistant to Regional Director, Ford Foundation described SDGs as the programme related, noting that Ford Foundation carried out Made-In-Aba campaign.
“We interested in to invest in the campaign. We took the risk of investing N1 billion in the campaign,” Ighile added.
