Why Nigerian youths don't need N5,000

Nigerian media was on Monday awashed with news that the present administration of President Muhammadu Buhari will dole out N5000 monthly to the country's 'poorest'.

This was announced by Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo over the weekend in a speech at the 10th year anniversary lecture of Crescent University, Abeokuta, Ogun State. According to him the benefit will cut across the unemployed youths and the underprivileged in the society. This ordinarily should elicit applause given the fact that it is in pursuance of campaign promise of President Buhari aimed at alleviating sufferings of the have nots, but given a second thought the gesture is likely to be counter productive. Like the saying that it is better to teach a man how to fish than give him a fish, there is the likelihood that members of the targeted group may become over dependent on N5,000 thus breeding a generation of lazy youth. Though it is believed that half bread is better than none, however, with the economic realities in the country, the said amount is too meagre to meet the monthly basic needs of the target recipients. With the rising cost of living, the handout may not have meaniful impact. Like Oliver Twist the beneficiaries are bound to ask for more as their need base expands. And, in their quest to not just get a taste of the pudding but more of it, some of them may devise dubious means of getting more cheap money. Then, the questions on many lips is what parameters will be used in determining the poor? The initiative may afterall not be an easy ride for the implementators because we do not have an efficient database in Nigeria. Therefore, it may not be able to track the target recipients. It is unfortunate that we make do with rough estimate of population in policies implementation. Most who are qualified for the benefit maybe deprived of it if there are no parameters to determine the target recipients. Corrupt public officials may take advantage of these to register their kith and kin who are not deserving of the programme. Going by 2014 statistics of the National Bureau of Statistics, about 1.8 million graduates are turned out into the labour market annually while no fewer than 5.3 million youths are unemployed. The statistics also put the population of Nigerians living in poverty at 112 million representing about 67 per cent of the country's 167 million population. This, thus raise the question of the sustainability of the initiative. Can the government possibly sustain the payment of 5,000 naira to an estimated target of 112 million people monthly considering the country's financial status and current expenditure. How practicable is it, at this time when some states are owing civil servants arrears of salary. The government has to be mindful of the huge technology commitment demanded of this strategy for it to be viable. And this will involve huge financial commitment too. The logistics alone will cost millions of naira, which could be deployed to other productive use(s) Without efficient mechanism put in place government will not be able to capture the genuine target recipients and also get update on their change of status when they get employed and even when the update is made. Without this, government may as well be creating avenue for scam by those in charge of the disbursement given the corruption that has eaten deep into the fabric of the civil service and the society. This highlights the need to for the present administration to fight corruption headlong because the corruption level alone will make this project impracticable. Such a large scale project cannot be implemented where corruption has become a norm. This menace will only make the initiative a pipe dream. While one must commend President Buhari on his determination and zeal to deliver and fulfil his campaign promises, but Mr. President and his think tank team must also take into consideration the stark realities on ground. The most important thing to do is for the Buhari administration in its avowed determination to fight poverty among the populace is to create enabling environment for investments to thrive. Instead of giving free money to the youth and the 'poorest ', the government should devise ways of empowering them or building strategies targeted at human capital development. It is believed that if President Buhari can successfully addresses the challenges in some sectors that have caused setback for our economy, he would have given the poor and unemployed more than the pittance budgeted for them monthly. These challenges include but not limited to insecurity, power supply problem and corruption. Instead of stomach infrastructure government should revamp our deplorable infrastructure in a bid to create job opportunities for unemployed Nigerians, as investment in infrastructure will directly create thousands of jobs. The creation of cottage industries in all the local governments in the country will also help in creating jobs for Nigerians and free them from the fangs of poverty. Then government at all levels must support to achieve small and medium scale businesses because this will help grow the economy of the nation in general. This administration must be seen to be committed to the development of employment opportunities for the unemployed as a way to enhance our economy. The President Buhari Administration maybe doing more harm than good to the 'poorest' with the N5000 allowee. The government need not catch fish for the people but teach them the skills of catching it themselves.