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

Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja

The federal government has said $700 million was disbursed to over 1.9 million households from 2016 to date under its National Social Safety Net Program (NASSP).

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

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 conditional cash transfer has 1,940,000 persons.

He said the enrolment of beneficiaries was still ongoing and that government was hoping that it would hit the target of two million by the end of December.

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

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

Speaking on the value of 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 achievement of the project was that, “it has been able to provide succour to the less privileged   people that have nobody standing in for them but have government standing in for them.”

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

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

She said that CHEERS led nine other civil society organisations (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 many of the participants had expressed satisfaction with enrolment adopted by NASSP in picking beneficiaries.

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

Also regarding perception of critics that the impact of programme was 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 the have being receiving the N5000 monthly payment.

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

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