FG: $700m Paid to 1.9m Households under Social Security Programme

Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja 

The federal government has said that $700 million has been disbursed to over 1.9 million households from 2016 to date under the implementation of the National Social Safety Net Programme (NASSP).

Under the NASSP initiative, some segment of the population considered highly impoverished were enrolled to benefit from the Conditional Cash Transfer of N5,000 monthly from the federal government to help lift them out of poverty.

The Coordinator of the National Cash Transfer Office, Ibrahim Adamu, who spoke to journalists during 

NASSP TPM Project Dissemination meeting in Abuja, said the current register of the beneficiaries of the conditional cash transfer has 1,940,000 persons.

He said the enrolment of beneficiaries is still ongoing, adding that government is hoping that it will hit the target of two million by the end of December.

“Our target beneficiaries may reach two million by the end of December. And this two million individuals will translate to about 10 million in the household,” Adamu said. 

With regard to the states where beneficiaries heve not been paid for two years, he said the funds earmarked for them was held up by the ICPC, but that the issues has now been resolved and payment to the beneficiaries will resume.

Speaking on the value of the total disbursement to beneficiaries of the programme, he said the “federal government has so far paid over $700 million since the inception of the programme”.

The Acting National Coordinator of NASSCO, Kabir Abdulahi, said that one of the greatest achievements of the project is that “it has been able to provide succour to the less privileged that have nobody standing in for them but have government standing in for them.

He said the poor and vulnerable in the society always need government to provide social safety nets to enable them overcome the tribulations of poverty. 

While presenting the report on dissemination of Year 2 Scorecard of Third-Party Monitoring (TPM) of the national safety net programme to stakeholders in Abuja Tuesday, the Executive Director of the Centre for Health Education, Economic Rehabilitation and Social Security (CHEERS), Ajia Ogugua Agagbo, said that there has been areas the programme recorded successes and where it witnessed shortcomings.

She said that CHEERS led nine other civil society organizations (CSOs) for the monitoring and assessment visits to many rural communities across the country.

Agagbo, who spoke on the outcome of the Year Two monitoring in 18 states, said that many of the participants had expressed satisfaction with the enrolment adopted by NASSP in picking beneficiaries.

The states monitored by the CSO group included Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Ebonyi, Enugu, Delta, Edo, Bayelsa, Rivers, Zamfara, Kebbi, Sokoto, Yobe, FCT, Imo, Abia, Akwa Ibom and Borno.

She said that the group’s findings showed that the national compliance level of household identification and numbering stood at 91.6 per cent.

Also regarding the perception of critics that the impact of the programme is not getting to the actual poor and indigent Nigerians as advertised, Agagbo said the monitoring team was able to meet with many of the beneficiaries who confirmed that they have been receiving the N5,000 monthly payment.

However, Agagbo said that out of the 119,699 beneficiaries sampled during second year monitoring cycle, 56,244 (47 per cent) were paid their stipends, while 63,425 (53 per cent) respondents have not been paid.

She said the reasons adduced for non-payment of cash to beneficiaries were due to logistics challenges.

While giving his assessment in the implementation of the safety net programme, a member of the World Bank team, Abdullahi Mohammed, said that a lot of improvement has been achieved in terms of efficiency and accountability due to the regular monitoring by the CSO groups led by the Centre for Health Education, Economic Rehabilitation and Social Security.