Corruption made many social intervention schemes senseless, says Osinbajo

VANGUARD

ON JANUARY 28, 2016

Abuja – Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has identified massive corruption and lack of coordination by Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), as bane of social intervention programmes by past administrations.

Osinbajo made the observation at a meeting of the MDAs involved in the President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s social investment plans held in his office.

Osinbajo’s spokesman, Mr Laolu Akande, made details of the meeting available to State House Correspondents in Abuja on Wednesday.

Akande said Osinbajo reiterated the resolve of Buhari to ensure effective coordination of the social intervention programmes.

He explained that the programme for which the Federal Government had proposed not less than half a trillion naira in 2016 was very dear to the President and the ruling APC.

“The bane of some of these projects in the past has been lack of implementation and a great deal of corruption,’’ Osinbajo told the MDAs.

According to him, so much corruption exist that so many of the projects did not make sense any more.

Osinbajo, therefore, told the officials that the implementation teams of the administration must ensure effective coordination and that money allocated to the programmes got to where they were meant to go to.

According to Akande, the vice president reminded them that it was why the administration was very serious with the anti-corruption fight to ensure that those who short changed the poor masses were held accountable.

Some of the MDAs in attendance included Education, Agriculture, Health, Environment and Water Resources.

Others were Labour and Employment, Bank of Industry, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) and a host of others.

The meeting, chaired by the vice president, was to drum it into the MDAs that they must communicate and share information to ensure proper coordination.

Buhari administration’s social investment programme has six schemes, including “teach Nigeria’’ where the FG would directly hire about half a million graduates, train and post them to schools.

Others are Youth Empowerment and Employment for non-graduates; the Conditional Cash Transfer scheme targeting about 110 million poor and vulnerable people and the Home Grown School Feeding Programme.

The rest are Free Education Scheme for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics students targeting about 100,000 students and Micro-Credit Scheme to empower micro entrepreneurs through soft loans.