The Executive Secretary/Permanent Secretary, Abia State Planning Commission, Ugoeze Adanma Iheuwa, spoke with our reporters; Enyioko Chibuike and Ugochinyere Okere; on wide range of issues concerning the National Social Safety Net Coordinating office and management of donor funds.
Excerpts:
What is the Job of NASSCO ?
NASCO is National Social Safety Net. This office is under the vice president. If you look at this country, we don’t have data on anything, we don’t have welfare because we don’t know who is who and the world is now a global village and a lot of countries, a lot of organizations are into the business of trying to do one or two things to help underdeveloped countries or developing countries. Nigeria fallen in that category is qualified to be assisted but one of the criteria to assist you, is for you to have data. If you say you are poor, what shows you are poor? Who and who are poor? What is their number? Are they more in women? Are they more in children? How many families? Where in Nigeria? Which state? Which local government? Which community?
So all these questions and other indices they are looking for, awoken up the interest of the government to these arrangements. We in the state, we have Bureau of Statistics. Their duty is gathering data. We have the enumerators; we have a lot of activities going on under that department. But they don’t have that kind of fund as a bureau to do what the federal is doing now. In other words, the social register will be used as it will capture the data of children from poor homes, women, fathers who are very poor, and don’t have houses or have houses, graduates, jobless graduates, skilled youths that are not graduates but are skilled, non-educated youths, non graduates, among others.
There is also Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT), there is CBT, there is YESSO (youth employment and social support operation), which captures data of youths. The social register will have all these information and that is why NASSCO headquarters started training officers in the state. They set up SOCU (State Operation Coordinating Unit) first. Staff were picked from all over the MDAs. Train these SOCU members and after that, they selected six L.G.A which include, Isialangwa south, Isialangwa North, Ugwunagbo, Ukwa East, Ohafia and Umunneochi.
What are the parameters used in selecting these L.G.As?
They said the selected L.G.As are the poorest in the state, although everyone will be covered so as to have a complete register. Within these six LGAs, 17,000 households were given as target. If divided by the six L.G.As; you will realize that what we are doing won’t cover the LGAs. The amount raised will not even be enough but the state government has promised to augment it by helping out. Capturing of data is going to go a long way to help because once we finish and send the report to the federal government, they will be able to release more fund.
The SDG’s are not being felt like the MDG, what is the role your commission is playing to ensure that the SDG can be really felt?
MDG was initiated by the federal government. MDG/SDG are the same thing and it is an ideology, but at different levels. See, run your government in a way that it will eradicate hunger and poverty and ensure everybody gets basic education. Run your government in a way infant mortality will be reduced and diseases will go, environment will be safe. Also develop partnership; you can’t do everything alone; that is ideology. The Ministry of Health is ensuring that we eradicate all kinds of diseases and reduce child mortality. What this office is doing is clear. Nigerian government was welcoming Paris club when Okonji Iwuala was going all over the world trying to cancel our debt. Paris club said we cancel your debt on one condition, that money you would have used to pay us back, use it to promote MDG. Nigerian government came back, set MDG structure and started giving money to states to promote those programme, built primary schools, health centers, boreholes, among others. That is why in our first secular, we always tell them to draw their budget estimate bearing the MDGs or the SDGs in mind.
MDGs had eighty goals, SDGs now have 17 goals. It expanded under eradication of extreme hunger and poverty. We are not feeling it now because we are embedding the ideology in our programmes and that help coming from the federal government, will enable this office support the state but it is not coming as much as it used to be. This office has not gotten anything from the FG since President Muhammadu Buhari came in, and I don’t know why but the underlining factor is that the economic situation affected everything.
How do you combine this programme you are doing, since budget is around the corner?
Well, as the permanent secretary you are coordinating, if you are blessed with good men, good store workers who are ready to work, whose cerebral content is high and whose spirit and zeal to work is 100%, you are ready to go, because as a person, you are just the manager distributing assignments and you too must have the ability to know the right and wrong, so as to know when one is getting it right/ wrong. There is division of labour. As a permanent secretary you cannot sit in your table and take decisions. You minute it to the relevant directors/ departments for comments. When the person comments check and add your own and take decision.
The SOCU is about 11 members. We have those in charge of accounts; we have coordinator, head of Department operations, project accountants, auditors etc. I’m just supervising. Like now all my colleague are at home; this is 5.45pm and I am in the office. It is known as putting extra effort in order to succeed. When you come to planning, 6 O’clock is like we are starting, that is the spirit of hunger to excel or hunger to do well for our people, because we are not paid extra.
Every year we undergo the process of budget preparation and budget defense but something is left out, after all these processes of scruntinization and approvals, nothing comes out of it. Why has our budget remained an annual ritual?
It is not an annual routine. Let me define budget. Budget is a proposal of what a government wants to do within a year or the financial road map of what the government wants to do within a year. For example, when one wants to go to the market, you sit down and plan yourself or a civil servant expecting his/her salary, doing menial jobs will add all the money together for a period of one year. It is a roadmap. You cannot carry money in your pocket and every morning you buy this and that without planning. So budget is a statutory requirement all over the world and you plan budget the way you plan your life. For instance, in Abia State we know our capacity, what we get is not high and the Internally Generated Revenue I have seen, have not pass 6 billion a year.
How do you assess the present government of Abia State?
The Governor is “Ogba aka ari oji” doing much when he has little to work with. This set is unfortunate. They work under very hard condition, working when Nigeria’s economy is at the lowest, working when the expectation is at the highest, so he is working when the expectation is at highest. So he is really trying, he has listening ears, he takes advice, he is well grounded intellectually to grasp issues and know what to do and the right time to do them.
Gov. Ikepazu is a good manager of resources and I strongly believe that when he comes back in 2019, God will blossom the economy of Nigeria so that Abia will be getting more fund.
