Buhari appoints Uwais adviser on social protection.

President Muhammadu Buhari has appointed Mrs Maryam Uwais as the Special Adviser on Social Protection Plan, a source in the Presidency disclosed yesterday. The source said Mrs Uwais is currently working in the Office of the Vice President.

The newly appointed adviser, a lawyer, is the wife of a former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mohammed Lawal Uwais. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Federal Government had included in the 2016 budget, N60billion credit facility for about one million artisans as well as market women and men. He said the scheme provided a one-time soft loan of about N60,000 each for one million artisans and market women and men.

The source said that the credit facility was a component of the six-point social protection programmes of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration. He said the budget laid by the president “is a bunch of proposals which would only become sacrosanct relatively after it has become an appropriation. To now have all this hue and cry on alleged versions, and switched copies is not just a distraction, but a storm in a tea-cup”. He said there were many important components in the 2016 budget proposals which should be discussed including the micro-credit soft loan. “While details of the implementation of the N60 billion micro-credit scheme are being worked out and would be rolled out once after the budget has been approved by the National Assembly, there are said to be five other social protection schemes identified to be coordinated by a Special Adviser for Social Protection Plan in the Presidency, with an effective inter-ministerial involvement”. He said there were five other social investment plans of the Buhari administration provided for in the budget with about N500 billion, “or an unprecedented 9% of the total budget”. It is believed that this is the first time that the FG is spending this much on targeted social welfare scheme. The other five schemes are: “The teach Nigeria scheme where the FG plans to directly hire 500,000 graduates as teachers; the youth employment scheme where between 300,000 to 500,000 non graduate youths would be taken through in skill acquisition programmes and vocational training; conditional cash transfer where government would pay directly N5000 per month to 1 million extremely poor Nigerians this year; homegrown school feeding where the federal government would serve one meal a day to primary school students and the free education scheme for science, technology, engineering and maths.