In the year 2000, a few months after the new democratic government of the then President Olusegun Obasanjo was sworn-in, one of his solutions, he claimed, to the country’s deepening poverty crisis came in the form of the National Poverty Eradication Programme, NAPEP. Nearly a dozen years after the programme was rolled out and bankrolled with billions of tax payers’ money, millions of Nigerians, who had sought succour under its the wings, have unsavoury tales, as they still wallow in abject poverty. CHIKA OTUCHIKERE writes.
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According to survey, Nigeria still occupied an unenviable position in the world poverty rankings with the country’s poverty index hitting an all-time high.
LEADERSHIP SUNDAY learnt that one of the pet projects expected to boost the fight against poverty may have hit the rocks, when the initiators and drivers of the project allegedly succumbed to pressure to compromise the objective of the programme. Rather than alleviate poverty, the Keke NAPEP project ended up a nightmare and contributor to poverty for millions who embraced the project.
Most of the people who ply the Keke NAPEP tricycle commercial transport trade in Abuja and other parts of the country lamented that all the plans they had of improving their situation were had been shattered.
According to some of the operators who spoke to LEADERSHIP SUNDAY, rather than put smiles on their faces the project had, as soons as they ventured into it, erased the possibility of any any smile. They lamented that the project had not only given them a false hope of survival, but landed them in huge debts which they had struggled to off-set.
These huge debts, they disclosed, arose from the high cost of purchasing the Keke NAPEP, which is presently 200 per cent costly than it was in 2001 when the first batch of tricycles were launched by? the NAPEP. This, they said, robbed the business of its lucrativeness.
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A Keke NAPEP owner,Aliyu Usman, who plies the Gwarimpa Estate route in Abuja, told LEADERSHIP SUNDAY that he hired the tricycle from people who were privileged to purchase it directly from the NAPEP. According to Usman, in order to make the agreed returns to the owner on daily basis, he had to wake up very early to comb the estate for customers. He said the tricycle which doubled as his bedroom has been unable to meet his needs.
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Usman, who spoke in Hausa,? disclosed that when he started the trade his dream was to save enough money to purchase his own tricycle, because only then would he be able to meet his needs. He said that his dreams are presently dashed, since he had been unable to save enough money, and that even when he thought that he had saved enough to purchase one, he discovered to his dismay that the cost of the tricycle had nearly doubled his savings.
“I was not able to save enough money, because the business is no long profitable. So many people have come into the business, and what I now make is far smaller than what I used to make then.
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“Moreover, whenever I thought that I had saved enough, I would hear that the cost of the Keke NAPEP has risen. Before, it used to sell for between N270, 000 and N300, 000 but today, with N400, 000 you can’t even buy one. As I am talking to you, I have given up the idea of buying my own”, Usman lamented.
Another Keke NAPEP Operator in Gwarimpa who gave his name as Shehu narrated how he acquired a loan from his in-laws to purchase the tricycle, but had been unable to repay ever since. According to him, he tried as much as he could to avoid his in-laws since he was unable to fulfill his promise to repay them. Shehu also lamented that the business was no longer as lucrative as it used to be when he first went into the business.
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“my brother, I will tell you the truth. There is no more gain in the Keke NAPEP. Too many people have entered the business and they have made it unattractive. If there is anything I regret, it is the banning of Okada from the city centre. I was doing very well when I was riding Okada. Not many enjoy this Keke NAPEP business, because the cost of repairing it is too much. My in-laws think I don’t just want to pay back the loan I collected, but the truth is that I don’t make enough money anymore.
“I was hoping that through the Keke NAPEP business, I will repay the loan and then save money to buy more, but as I am talking to you, I don’t even have money to feed my family of two wives and four children. It is difficult to get. In fact, I need help urgently,” Shehu lamented.
LEADERSHIP SUNDAY observed that most of the young men who drove the Keke NAPEP for a living were northerners who could barely communicate in English. Asked if they had any education background, they readily replied in Hausa “Ba Turanchi, ba makaranta”, (“No English, no education) . It was difficult trying to establish any form of smooth communication.
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At the Area One and Area Three junctions, two of the few places in the FCT metropolis where the tricycles can be found in their numbers, the sad tales of the hardship they encounter are better left unsaid. A young man, Salisu Abdullahi, who claimed to be the spokesperson of the Keke NAPEP operators in Area One, said many of the operators got their tricycles through a cooperative arrangement entered into with a micro-finance bank whose name he declined to disclose.
Abdullahi lamented that, although they succeeded in getting the loan, repayment had not been easy, because shortly after most of them purchased the tricycle, the FCT administration slammed a ban on the use of the Keke NAPEP within the metropolis.
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“Today, there are so many places we cannot ride our tricycles. This has made it difficult for some of us to make enough money to repay the loan we got. Besides, uniformed officers like the police, VIO and road safety officers are not making life easy for us. They use every excuse they can manufacture to extort money from us. We have bills to pay, but the money we make is barely enough to service the loan and put food on our table. We are calling on government to do something about this.
“The Keke NAPEP is so expensive that a poor man cannot afford one without any assistance. We thought the Keke NAPEP was meant for the poor. I can tell you that the Keke NAPEP is no longer for the poor, but for the rich. How many poor people can cough out N450,000 to buy the Keke NAPEP”? He queried.
Abullahi also said that because of the fragile nature of the tricycle, it hardly lasts beyond six months. He noted that after six months the operators had to spend so much money to effect repairs on the tricycle, a situation which he said was made worse by the poor quality of roads in the city’s suburbs.
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Enquiries made by LEADERSHIP SUNDAY at the NAPEP office revealed that controversy had continued to dog the activities of the Keke NAPEP project. The controversies which reportedly border on funds had put the agency on the spot. At a point, a blame game played out between the officials of the NAPEP and the contractors who were responsible for importing the Keke NAPEP into the country. This, a source inside the NAPEP office said, was responsible for the escalating cost of the tricycle.
However, the NAPEP coordinator, Mr. Magnus Kpakol, who was at the centre of the controversies had absolved himself of any complicity in the controversy. According to an interview he granted which was posted on the NAPEP website, Kpakol maintained that any discrepancy related to the cost of the tricycle could have taken place before 2003 when he became the coordinator. He also said that he and his team had made efforts to resolve the controversy and “put the project back on track”.
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His response did not, however, assure on how the cost of the tricycle could become affordable to the army of poor and unemployed masses whom it was originally meant for.
?The target of the NAPEP, according to another document on the website, is to “completely wipe out poverty from Nigeria by theyear 2010”. Having gone beyond 2010 with no end in sight to the problem of poverty, many of the Keke NAPEP operators are asking the government to scrape the NAPEP project and look elsewhere for a solution to end the poverty in the land.
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