Economic expert seeks redesign of FG’s cash transfer programme

Uche Uwaleke, an economy and capital market expert, has urged the Federal Government to redesign its conditional cash transfer programme.

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Mr Uwaleke, a professor and the President, Capital Market Academics of Nigeria (CMAN), made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.

He said the cash transfer programme, one of President Bola Tinubu’s administration’s principal poverty reduction interventions, required fundamental redesign to improve transparency and public confidence.

The expert said the programme could provide temporary relief and protect vulnerable households from severe economic shocks.

He, however, said its effectiveness would depend on credible beneficiary identification, payment integrity, adequate transfer amounts and the ability to monitor outcomes.

Mr Uwaleke said a programme whose beneficiaries could not be independently verified risked excluding deserving households, creating opportunities for abuse and weakening public trust.

“I recommend that the government should replace the existing approach with a more transparent, independently verifiable and better targeted social protection framework.

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“A strengthened social register should be regularly updated and linked, with appropriate privacy safeguards, to credible data from relevant government institutions.

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“Community-based verification should complement digital identification to ensure that people in remote and underserved communities are not excluded,” he said.

He also recommended a payment architecture that allowed traceability, alongside accessible grievance redress mechanisms and periodic impact assessments.

Speaking on food production, Mr Uwaleke called for the revival of the Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFRRI) programme.

He said the revival would help address challenges affecting food production, rural access and basic infrastructure across the country.

Mr Uwaleke said national development could not be achieved by concentrating investment in major urban centres.

He noted that rural communities where much of the country’s agricultural production took place, needed stronger links to markets and essential services.

According to him, the underlying logic of the programme is to bring development closer to rural communities by addressing food production, rural access and basic infrastructure.

Mr Uwaleke said a renewed DFRRI-type programme should not reproduce past institutional arrangements but be redesigned as a community-centred rural productivity and infrastructure initiative.

He said the initiative should be jointly implemented by the federal, state and local governments, with clear accountability mechanisms and measurable outcomes.

According to him, these commitments must be translated into a coordinated national agricultural productivity programme with measurable targets, clear institutional responsibilities and adequate funding.

“Its priorities should include feeder roads, small-scale irrigation, rural electrification, water supply, produce aggregation centres, storage facilities, primary healthcare access and market infrastructure.

“Such a programme can accelerate grassroots development by connecting farming communities to markets, reducing transportation costs, improving access to agricultural inputs and creating employment through rural infrastructure projects.

“The emphasis should be on raising output per hectare, increasing multiple cropping, improving yields, reducing post-harvest losses and strengthening linkages between farmers, agro-processors and domestic markets,” he said.

Mr Uwaleke said the programme would provide a practical means of ensuring that economic recovery reached communities that had remained disconnected from the benefits of national growth.

“The emphasis must be on functional infrastructure and productive assets rather than politically distributed projects that have little lasting economic value,” he said.

Mr Uwaleke noted that beyond agriculture, the cost of energy remained a major constraint on domestic production.

He said manufacturers, small businesses and service providers continued to face high operating costs because of unreliable electricity supply and dependence on alternative energy sources.

The CMAN president said expansion of gas infrastructure, renewable energy, embedded generation and reliable grid supply must become integral components of the government’s prosperity agenda.

He said reducing energy costs would improve industrial competitiveness, encourage domestic production, reduce dependence on imported goods and create employment opportunities.

“The same logic applies to transportation and logistics.

“The completion of strategic roads, railways, ports and inland logistics infrastructure should be prioritised according to their economic returns and capacity to reduce the cost of moving people and goods.

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“A well-connected agricultural or industrial production centre can generate substantially greater economic value than an isolated project with limited linkages to productive activity.

“Infrastructure investment must consequently be evaluated not only by the amount spent or kilometres constructed but also by its contribution to productivity, trade and employment,” he explained.

Mr Uwaleke said Nigeria needed a deliberate strategy to deepen domestic manufacturing, strengthen agro-processing, develop industrial clusters and encourage production of goods where the country had competitive advantage.

He noted that achieving this would require more than incentives and policy declarations.

The expert said it demanded reliable energy, efficient ports, affordable long-term finance, predictable taxation, effective trade facilitation and a stable regulatory environment.

Mr Uwaleke also called for stronger coordination between the fiscal and monetary authorities.

(NAN)