Social Investment Programmes key to improved human capital development, financial inclusion, says Osinbajo

Vice president Yemi Osinbajo said at the 24th Nigerian Economic Summit in Abuja that Social Investment Programmes of the President Buhari-led administration has been crucial to the human capital development and financial inclusion in the country.

“Our Social Investment Programme is the largest and most ambitious social investment programme in the history of our country. We provided N500 billion for it in both the 2016 and 2017 budgets. But the total spend so far, in both cycles, is closer to N250 billion, and that’s from both budgets,” he said.

The Social Investments Programmes comprise the N-power programme, the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme, Trader Moni programme and the Conditional Cash Transfer programme. On the Trader Moni programme, the VP said, “When I went to launch the scheme at the Nyanya market, there was a woman who was selling her kpomo… and it had water in it. And I asked her how much it was, she said everything there was about N3,000.

“So I said to her, ‘what is your profit? How do you make profit from it?’ And she pointed to the woman who was standing right next to her. The woman who stood right next to her had her own kpomo in a little bowl, it was like she was saying, ‘I am a big player here, look at this one.’ So, a lot of these people are really the bottom of the pyramid, but they are hardworking, they are in that value chain making their contributions.”

The vice president also shed light on the things the APC-led administration aims to do aid the limping education sector. He said the government are aiming “to get the 9m out-of-school children back to school. It is a complex process requiring the full cooperation of state governments, religious authorities as well as the resources to build schools, equip them properly and train the required number of teachers.”

He also revealed there were plans to “introduce in-class skills development on functional, economic, and interpersonal skills around Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics.  A country-wide curriculum is in development with coding, digital arts, design thinking, robotics, critical thinking and other skills taken into account in interpreting traditional curriculum topics.”