House Representatives on Tuesday urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to mandate the Minister of Finance and the Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, to ensure that all accounts of the National Social Investment Programmes Agency are unfrozen within 72 hours to enable the smooth recommencement of all the agency’s programmes.
The House also resolved that the minister should ensure the release of funds to NSIPA for the payment of outstanding stipends owed to 395,731 N-Power beneficiaries nationwide without further delay.
The House urged the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, Nentawe Yilwatda, to ensure that all the administrative bottlenecks hindering the smooth operations of all programmes of NSIPA are immediately removed.
These resolutions followed the adoption of a motion “Need to Unfreeze the Accounts of the NSIPA for the Reactivation of all Social Investment Programmes of the Agency”, jointly sponsored by the Deputy Speaker of the House, Benjamin Okezie Kalu and 20 other members.
This is as the House also resolved to transmit the resolution to the Senate for concurrence.
Kalu, while moving the motion, noted that the NSIPA was established pursuant to the National Social Investment Programme Agency (Establishment) Act, 2023, with the mandate of empowering unemployed persons, vulnerable widows, orphans, children, persons with disabilities, and vulnerable senior citizens, among others.
He said NSIPA oversees critical social intervention programmes such as Grant for Vulnerable Groups, N-Power, the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme, Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT), and the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP).
Kalu said the Renewed Hope Agenda of the President Tinubu-led government gives emphasis
to the mandate of the NSIPA to cushion the effect of economic shocks on the poor and the vulnerable.
He said it was disturbing that despite the programmes of NSIPA being vital for poverty alleviation, youth empowerment, and economic inclusivity in Nigeria, the agency’s functionality has been hindered due to administrative bottlenecks, insufficient funding, and frozen accounts.
