By Onozure Dania

An independent body, New Watch for Assessment and Monitoring Initiative, NWAMI, has commended the Federal Government’s National Social Investment Programme, N-SIP.

The body, at its quarterly meeting at Ikeja, Lagos, said the government had done relatively well in touching lives through the investment initiative, which was established in 2016 to tackle unemployment, poverty and hunger across the country.

National Secretary of NWAMI, Mr. Olajide Ogundiran, told newsmen that the assessment was conducted between January 2017 and June 2018, and it was discovered that people across the 36 states including the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja, are the direct and indirect beneficiaries of N-SIP.

He maintained that the selection process of beneficiaries was transparent, unbiased, efficient and all-inclusive irrespective of tribal, religious or political affiliations.

According to him, “We spoke with people across Nigeria to sample their views on the investment programme. The beneficiaries we interviewed were selected from the educational, health and agricultural sectors.”

Also in focus in the FG’s initiative is the meal per day to cover a minimum of 5.5 million school children in primary 1-3, under the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme, NHGSFP.

“In the area of education, we discovered that professional teachers and graduates of other disciplines were deployed to public schools to teach. Judging from the students’ results of schools sampled in Lagos, Abuja, Ogun, Edo, Ebonyi, Akwa Ibom and Kano states, it showed the impact of the newly-engaged teachers.”