| Abstrakt: |
Despite the formulation and implementation of several Social Investment Programmes (SIPs) in Nigeria, poverty and unemployment are still recurring decimals in the country. Over 80 million Nigerians are living in poverty, making the country the poverty capital of the world, while 50% of the youths are unemployed, which is among the highest rates in the world. No doubt, billions of naira has been spent on SIPs recently in the country but there are no commensurate tangible results. Although concerted intellectual efforts have been invested in extant studies on how corruption, insufficient funding, inadequate implementation, among others, undermine SIPs in Nigeria, there is scanty intellectual inquiries into how they serve as means of siphoning state resources and rewarding political associates in the country, especially during the years 2011 and 2021. Adopting the Marxian Class Analysis (MCA) and relying on the qualitative method of data collection and analysis, this study uncovers that the inability of SIPs to solve the hydra-headed problems of poverty and youth unemployment in Nigeria is rooted in the underlying ideology guiding the various SIPs, which is to enrich few persons and control many others. To this end, the article argues that SIPs are, to a considerable extent, a means or a tool for rewarding political cronies and controlling dissatisfied youths. Hence, the article recommends, among others, that future SIPs should imbibe the characteristics of good governance in order to actualise their purposes, and that SIPs should be monitored by civil society organisations, anti-graft agencies and the general masses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
