By Isha Mohammed
It’s no longer news that more and more Nigerians are on a daily basis regretting the decision taken at the poll on March 28 last year just as those of us who warned the people who cared to listen about the impending danger called APC, have now been vindicated.
While Nigerians continue to grapple with the cluelessness and visionlessness of the present administration which struggles to carry out the most basic assignment- like preparing and signing a decent budget, making critical appointments, choosing an economic team and drawing a blueprint to move the country forward- our people are now wondering how we all chose to enter this kind of bus which in common parlance is called “one chance”.
With no stable electricity, no fuel and no money and government abdicating its responsibility by asking Nigerians to blame the saboteurs and vandals, life is now assuming the hobbesian state of nature… and Nigeria, our darling nation closer to Somalia like never before.
In its desperation to win election, the present ruling party promised heaven and earth and played with so many figures. Among the promises were 5000 megawatts of electricity every year. Now, the government is asking Nigerians to hold vandals responsible for the total darkness that has taken over the land.
They also promised 10000 new jobs every year. Ironically, their incompetence and incapacity end up employing millions of youths who have been busy selling fuel on jerry-cans on the highway for months now.
They also promised to give all unemployed youths and aged people 5000 naira per month. But this is one promise that has exposed the dirty linen of the party. While party leaders are trying to deny it to avoid Nigerians asking for it, the Vice President keeps saying it will come to pass. The Minister of Information is trying change the goalpost in the middle of the game by modifying the promise that its not going to be cash and that it wont be for all unemployed youths.
The President is not interested in that promise at all. He said it during his maiden media chat that it was his deputy who was trying the push the agenda and that he knew little or nothing about it. What other evidence do we need to know that the ruling party is in disarray. At this juncture, one has no choice than to recall that former Presidential spokesman, Dr Reuben Abati actually called APC a disaster-prone mongrel in its formative years.
We also have to recall that former President Goodluck Jonathan did not only fulfill his promise to Nigerians, he did so in style. Though, we didn’t appreciate all he was doing well enough that time, now that we have seen the difference between light and darkness, we have no choice than to give him his deserved kudos at this point.
Unlike the present set of confused clowns, Jonathan had brilliant minds who brought ideas on how to create jobs, empower youths and women.
His finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala also reminded us recently about how she and others did a lot of great things they did for Nigerian women and youths.
Okonjo-Iweala even told us how Jonathan was booed by male lawmakers for supporting gender equality.
In a speech titled: ‘Why Should Finance Ministers Care About Gender Equality?‘ addressing finance ministers across the world, Okonjo-Iweala reminded us all about how a special entrepreneurship programme she designed for women in Nigeria, succeeded in creating 10,000 jobs for the nation.
Her full speech would remind you of those good old days when Nigeria was in safe hands. It will annoy you that a nation had this set of clear-headed minds and threw them away and chose learners to pilot her affairs.
Excerpts
“The event is coming at a time Jonathan’s successor is finding it difficult to grapple with the demands of office and struggling to find his bearing.
I am delighted to see so many ministers and officials around the table. How over the last two years did this come about, you many wonder.
The idea first came to me in 2013, when I became Nigeria’s minister of finance for a second time. I had grown tired, quite candidly, of the phrase “gender mainstreaming.”
It wasn’t getting us anywhere fast enough. Yet here I was, minister of finance, with so many tools at my disposal—what excuse could I give for not moving forward on this? So I sat down with my team and asked, ‘What can we do? What incentives can we offer through the budget—that’s the big tool we have—that would really empower women and move us toward gender equality?’ It took us some time, but we realized we had this powerful instrument and we needed to use it.
Budget incentive
The president was supportive. We came up with the idea to work with the World Bank Group and the UK aid agency, DFID. And we designed a system whereby, through the budget, if a ministry delivered certain additional results for girls and women—over and above its targets—it would receive additional budget as an incentive.
We offered this to the cabinet on a voluntary basis and five ministries initially signed up: agriculture, health, water, communication technology, and public works. The ministry of women’s affairs agreed to monitor and evaluate progress, and our colleagues, partners, and the donor community agreed to support our initiative.
We kicked off with a small amount, US$21 million dollars, to see if this would work. When the president announced it in parliament, he was booed by male parliamentarians and cheered by female MPs, but it passed. It stayed in the budget and achieved excellent results:
Our ministry of agriculture was eager to boost productivity from a very low level, subsistence, to a high level. And if 70 percent of your workforce is in agriculture, and most of them are women, then women surely need access to the right inputs.
Very quickly, the minister of agriculture, who is now President of the African Development Bank, designed a system of electronic wallets—getting the middleman out of the graft-prone distribution of inputs such as fertilizer and pesticides. We said, ‘If you get an additional number of women to use these wallets, your ministry will get additional budget.’
The results were spectacular: 2.5 million women began using electronic wallets, far more than anticipated. Our health ministry was concerned about vesico-vaginal fistula, a debilitating and degrading condition we weren’t able to address quickly or widely enough.
Our initiative prompted an additional 3,000 surgeries to repair it. Our ministry of water resources developed a system for women to manage health and sanitation centers in their communities, which just won a prize in the 2016 World Water Exhibition. Our ministry of Public Works began to train women as subcontractors in procurement. This was critical and absolutely unprecedented.
Those are just a few examples of how we were able to leverage the budget to advance gender equality. If you incentivie fellow ministers, they will deliver. This will empower more women and get more resources into their hands.
Secondly, we developed a program for women entrepreneurs. A World Bank team supported us, and again we achieved spectacular results. We used a portion of the budget to incentivize young entrepreneurs, 40 and younger, who would register their businesses, get peer learning and mentoring, and a grant if they won a business planning competition.
In the first round, only 17 percent of the applicants were women. But more than 50 percent of small and medium-sized firms in Nigeria are run by women. So we held a second round just for women, setting aside about US$8 million dollars. About 64,000 thousand people applied. We ultimately selected 1,200 women to receive grants of US$10,000 to US$90,000—and they created about 10,000 new jobs.
These programs are helping women and men at the grassroots. They’re targeting our poorest and most vulnerable people. Our results in Nigeria should remind everyone what a vital role Finance Ministers can play to level the playing field and create truly equal opportunity for all.”
Nothing to add, nothing to remove. I just hope the average minds who are governing our affairs now can read and learn.
Mr. Isha Mohammed writes from Kebbi.
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