By Dele Sobowale
“Some great misfortune to portend; no enemy can match a friend.”— Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745. (VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, VBQ  p 161).

Tell me quickly which appointed Federal Government official received the highest vote in the 2016 Budget? If your answer is Babatunde Fashola, the Super Minister of Power, Works and Housing, you are dead wrong. The biggest “pot of gold” or naira actually was handed, again on paper, to someone who is not even a Minister. She is just a Director, but a really Super-Super Director.

In fact, in the entire history of Nigeria, no single individual had ever been allocated so much money to manage in one year. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Mrs Maryam Unwais, the wife of the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, who hitherto had established a track record of solid achievements. But, whose hard-earned reputation for delivering results is steadily being eroded by serving as the Director of Buhari’s Social Protection Programme, SPP, which was touted as the “most ambitious” programme in history. To the SPP, N500 billion was allocated or eight per cent of the 2016 budget.

This was the “pot of gold” which benevolently was handed to Mrs Uwais to administer. In years past, that sum and the selection of Mrs Uwais as the one in charge should have been cause for congratulations; her office and home should have been under siege by contractors and she should be smiling….

But, as the year rolls inexorably to an end, Madam is not smiling. In fact, the poor woman is unhappy. She knows one thing which most Nigerians don’t know, except “busy-body” faculty and students of UniJankara, that Mrs Uwais will end 2016 with only massive failure to report on the SPP. Her “friends”, who promised N500 billion, had delivered less than N80 billion. None of the promises made by President Buhari on May 29, 2015 regarding the SPP would have been delivered. As a grandmother, one particular failure must hit her hardest – the failure to provide food to five million school children.

Uwais…Speaking out against child marriage

From January, we, at UniJankara, had told the Federal Government to postpone the launching of this programme which was based on ill-advised political gimmick. They would not listen. Even when food was in abundant supply and far cheaper than now, we had done our research and we were confident that the cost of the food programme was under-estimated.

We were confident that the cost of food delivery would exceed the production costs in most rural areas; that the logistics problems pertaining to delivery would overwhelm the governments unless a comprehensive study was undertaken to look into the peculiar problems of each area where intervention would take place. They wouldn’t listen. The Chief spokesman in the Vice-President’s office, the Vice-President himself and others self-deluded, often spoke as if the food delivery was a “done deal”.

Like vultures, UniJankara people can be extremely patient. We knew somebody’s reputation was going to take a dive on this misadventure called “the most ambitious” programme ever.

Despite being vindicated this year, we take no pleasure in what is happening to Mrs Uwais, who had become the first victim of official benevolence. Indisputably, those who recommended as well as the President who appointed her wished no harm. But, inadvertently they have put her in harm’s way. And as this year comes to an end, she and the ex-CJN have a tough decision to make.

She can “soldier on” hoping that next year will be better. In that case, she had better be told the bad news now. Next year will not be significantly better. It might even be worse. The famine alert which the Presidency issued to Nigerians starting January 2017 will last for several months. Whatever food estimates for raw food materials which formed the basis of the 2017 budget are already inadequate.

The negative variances in cost of food items will ensure the programme runs out of funds before December next year – even if the amount budgeted is delivered. Unfortunately, the programme will still not be fully funded next year.

The alternative is for Madam to quit. It might turn out to be the better option. She has suffered enough; she should “step aside” (apologies to Babangida the originator of that expression) and let the Presidency go and find another victim of their benevolence. “Fighting for lost causes is a sure way to [personal] destruction.” (VBQ p 60). However, if she still insists on hanging on, she would have forfeited all claims to our sympathy.

THE THUNDEROUS SOUNDS OF SILENCE

O! What a tangled web we weave

When first we practice to deceive

Sir Walter Scott, 1771-1832.

The last paragraph before this one was written in the third week of November, and I was undecided what to add to it. So, it was divinely suspended. Two days after, all the major newspapers in Nigeria carried, as their lead story, the plan by the Federal Government to engage and deploy 200,000 teachers nationwide on December 1, 2016. The announcement was categorical. Coming from the office of the Vice President, it could not have been more authoritative than that.

That announcement forced me to postpone the publication of this article. It was important to wait – in the hope that poor Mrs Uwais might, at last, have something to record as a positive achievement for this year – despite my doubts about the possibility of that landmark success this year.

Alas, December 1 came and went. December 2 followed and today is December 3, 2016. The office of the Vice President, not only failed to announce the appointments and deployments of teachers to schools, it kept quiet – perhaps hoping that people would forget the failed promise they have made.

With that failure to recruit and deploy 200,000 teachers on December 1, 2016, and the possibility that there will be no deployments this year, the Social Protection Programme, SPP, called the greatest welfare programme in history and announced without the modesty required of governments embarking on a new experiment would have nothing to show for the first full year.

Readers should forgive me for telling the VP’s people “I told you so!”. Right from the beginning, the Federal Government was advised to spend this year planning various aspects of the programme, ensuring that the funds would be there, as and when required and the people who can manage the logistics of large scale food distribution are put in charge. As usual, government officials ask for “all hands on deck”, but only put on deck sycophants.

Worse still, the schools will open in January 2017 with the kids not closer to getting the promised free meals, the teachers not yet ready to be deployed, unemployed Nigerians not yet receiving the promised N5000 per month. In short, the promised bowl of illusions had in 2016 turned out to be another set of unfulfilled promises.

Who is to blame? Certainly not Buhari — who never pretended to be strong in Economics. It is the advisers who assured him that all these things were possible in 2016. Certainly not Mrs. Uwais – who was only appointed and left holding the empty bag by those who devised the SPP and costed (perhaps padded) it without doing their homework properly.

For President Buhari, as well as Mrs Uwais, the danger to their reputation is still there in 2017. The funds are uncertain, the planning, especially for food distribution, is still woeful and the people executing the programme are, at best, enthusiastic amateurs.

Unless something drastic happens, readers of this page will again be confronted with another year of failure of the SPP.

Those who speak without modesty always have difficulty eating their words.

LAST LINE

Thanks Professor Wole Soyinka for upholding the old virtue that “a promise is a bond” and for not listening to all those who urged you to recant. God bless you, Sir.