By Adekunle Adekoya

LAST week, I used journalistic license to introduce a new word, SCAMSIDY, by simply joining two words — scam and subsidy. I continue using that license today to bring you another word: pallootives. Joining the words, palliative and looting wasn’t as easy as joining scam and subsidy, but nevertheless, we are here with that word – pallootives, which in my dictionary means the looting of palliatives.

By now we are familiar with the ongoing conversation regarding removal of subsidy on petrol. Last week, the Minister of Finance, Hajia Zainab Ahmed, told us that subsidy is at the terminal stage of its life in the administration of petroleum products importation and distribution and that our dear country has secured a whopping $800 million from the World Bank to provide palliatives for 50 million of us that the government has determined will be the hardest hit by subsidy removal.

My reaction was to ask what parameters were used in selecting 50 million of us, at the rate of five of us from 10 million households. The government’s demographers (or magicians) are yet to provide an answer.

Director-General of the Nigerian Employers Consultative Association, NECA, Mr. Adewale-Smatt Oyerinde, joined the conversation and brought the issue, hare-brained as it is, to a level where the impact can be better appreciated. He averred that the $800 million for 10 million households works out at N36,000 each. Pray, what can N36,000 do for a family of five in today’s Nigeria, where one 50kg bag of rice is selling above N40,000? With a 12.5kg cylinder of gas selling at N8,000? A loaf of bread selling at N800?

That was before it came to light that the actual amount that will be available to the Federal Government for sharing will be $747 million. The balance of $53 million will be spent on logistics and administration. Here’s why.

According to The Guardian, The Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning is expected to spend $53 million on hiring staffers, office administration, committee overheads and other logistics such as training and workshops out of the $800 million the Federal Government has secured from the World Bank to mitigate the effects of petrol subsidy removal on vulnerable Nigerians.

The Guardian further reported that an agreement is in place between the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning and the International Development Association, IDA, the concessional lending arm of the World Bank Group which spells out how the money will be expended to execute activities that would make the project implementation seamless.

In line with the executed document, $747 million or 93.4 per cent of the total sum will be disbursed to beneficiaries while the balance will go into federal and state bureaucracies and logistics to be set up to the satisfaction of the IDA.

The agreement says the Federal Government will establish a National Social Safety Nets Coordinating Office, NASSCO, which means doing away with officials of the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs already trained to carry out such tasks. The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs presides over NASSCO national management team.

The document also details terms of the loans, interest rate and repayment schedules, which will spread till 2051. Apart from NASSCO, the National Steering Committee, NSC, is expected to “have been duly established” to ensure the effectiveness of the project, as stipulated in the agreement.

The loan conditionality leans heavily on logistics in the implementation phase with a National Cash Transfer Office, NCTO, in place throughout the implementation “with functions and resources satisfactory to the Association (lender), and with staff in adequate numbers plus terms of reference, qualifications, integrity and experience satisfactory to the Association.

What this means is that the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management which ordinarily should handle this has been shut out of the project. I am not surprised; the antecedents of that ministry are mind-boggling. Remember that on August 3, 2020, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Sadiya Farouq, said that the Federal Government spent about N523.3 million on school feeding programme during the COVID-19 lock-down, adding that about 124,589 households benefited across the FCT, Lagos and Ogun states. Magic. She forgot that schools were also shut during the time.

By the time the federal and state governments comply with the terms of the $800 million grant, a brand new bureaucracy would have been birthed to administer the palliatives. By the time these new mandarins at the federal and state levels settle in their air-conditioned offices with gleaming official cars, there would be very little money left to administer, and Nigerians would be left holding the short end of the stick. The palliatives would have been systemically looted. I repeat: the Buhari administration should hands-off everything about subsidy and leave it for the incoming government, including the World Bank’s $800 million palliatives grant. We’ve had enough of governance by scamming.