The federal government has promised to make N75,000 cash transfers to 15 million poor Nigerian homes in 2025, but it is yet to fulfil its pledge to increase allowances for National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members from a monthly N33,000 to N77,000.
On Wednesday, Nentawe Yilwatda, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, appeared on the Arise TV Morning Show and said President Bola Tinubu wanted his ministry to make the payments to 15 million of Nigeria’s poorest households.
Yilwatda further explained that each household had four to five members, making an estimated figure of 70 million beneficiaries.
“The target of the president is that we should target 15 million households. And an average household is about four to five. We are discussing here roughly about 70 million households with about N75,000 this year,” he said.
This means if the government commits to this grant through one single N75,000 payment per household in the entire year, then it would be spending N1.125 trillion.
Meanwhile, in 2023, Ahidjo Yahaya, the NYSC Area Director of the North-East Zone, revealed that the scheme enrolled 400,000 corps members per year nationwide. Corps members spend a mandatory year in the NYSC scheme.
Going by this figure, FIJ calculated what it would cost the government to pay them N77,000 as promised in July 2024.
These allowance payments would set the government back N30.8 billion per month, and in a year, the government would have spent N369.6 billion. This means if the government paid corps members for the next three years when the minimum wage would be up for review again, its N1.108 trillion spend, would still be less than the budget for cash transfers the humanitarian ministry aims to make in 2025.
FIJ also considered that the government already pays N33,000 to corps members and would only need to add a monthly N44,000 in payments, meaning its true added cost amounts to N17.6 billion per month, and an annual of N211.2 billion.
In October 2024, Yushau Ahmed, the Director General of the NYSC, told the BBC that the reason corps members were not receiving their allowances was because the government had not released funds. He said the problem was not peculiar to corps members as his staff were also promised increases they had not received.
“We are hopeful that the new pay will be implemented soon, though the funds have not yet been released to us,” the NYSC DG said.
“The information we have does not specify when the new allowance will be paid, but we have been assured that their monthly allowance has been increased from 29 July 2024.”
With uncertainty looming over the continued delay of this promise, it remains to be seen if the government would fulfil its new pledge to the country’s poorest too.
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