We the people have been aware for the longest while that the National Insurance Scheme had become a sort of piggy bank to successive political administrations. The recently concluded Structural Adjustment Programme has sharpened our awareness of how much central government may have been presiding over the pauperization of the NIS and other state-owned entities. Most of we the people never took a keen interest in the operations of the NIS. Every time, the central government was in a “jam”, NIS “helped out” by “investing” in government paper.