Background
The Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice (ANEEJ) has been working on issues of assets recovery since 1996 and is the host of the MANTRA project and Nigerian Network on Stolen Asset(NNSA). MANTRA was designed to address issues of corruption within the broader objectives of the Anti-Corruption in Nigeria (ACORN) program of the British Government’s Department for International Development (DFID) which aims to strengthen the anticorruption regime in Nigeria. The MANTRA project aims to ensure that assets recovered are disbursed or invested in programmes for the poor and vulnerable in line with the SDGs. The Federal Government had implemented about 26 social protection programmes from 2000 till 2018 with varying levels of success (World Bank, 2016). By 2017, the Federal Government approved the National Social Protection Policy (July 2017) to guide as an umbrella framework for all social interventions (NCTO, 2017). The National Social Investment Office (NSIO) was the designated coordinating office and lead for the implementation of the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) (NSIP , 2018).
Recently, ANEEJ carried out a field monitoring exercise to keep an eye on the August/September cash disbursement of the Abacha loot to the poor of the poorest in the country. This is to ascertain if these monies gets to the right beneficiaries and if it is used judiciously for the reason it was repatriated from Switzerland to Nigeria.
Below is a link to documentary on the MANTRA field monitoring exercise and how to access the MANTRA website:
The best thing about this documentary was hearing the voice of one of the beneficiaries of the conditional cash transfer payments. Often politicians; technocrats, policy and decision makers forget what the poor look like, as the world of the impoverished is far removed from theirs. The faces of the poor are seen (but unseen) and their voices rarely heard.
ReplyDeleteThere is much work to be done in truly representing the interests of the poor and where possible, have them represent their own interests through greater inclusion in development programmes.