Mr Apera Iorwa, National Coordinator, National Social Safety-Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO) says the Federal Government pays N10 billion to one million beneficiaries every two months from the National Cash Transfer.
NASSCO is a Federal Government agency with the mandate to establish the building blocks and delivery of targeted transfers and livelihood supports to extreme poor and vulnerable households in the country.
“From the Federal Government cash transfer programme, each beneficiary got N5,000 monthly but because of logistics, we pay N10,000 every two months and we have paid about one million beneficiaries across the country,’’ he said.
Iorwa said that at first, it started with 19 states from 2016 to 2017 and then in 2018, with the World Bank loan, it came to 24 states and gradually it had covered the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
According to him, the distribution depends on how the state governments are able to establish their social register in each of their states.
“We do this through the World Bank facility of 500 million dollars for five years.
“The Abacha repatriated loot of 325 million dollars was given to National Cash Transfer Office (NCTO). We have a total projection of 822 million dollars for over five years,” he said.
According to him, at the moment, there are 35.2 million individuals from 8.2 million households in the social register in 36 states and FCT.
He said that out of the 35 million individuals, about 49 per cent of them were female and 51 per cent male adding that 68 per cent of them were illiterates.
He said that the cash transfer had also helped to send more children to school, as their parents were able to buy books and school uniforms.
Iorwa added that about 4.8 per rent which amounted to 1.3 million people living with disabilities were benefitting from the programme.
Mrs Ajia Agagbo, Executive Director, Centre for Health Education, Economic Rehabilitation and Social Security (CHEERS), an NGO, said that the meeting was the report on the scorecard of the project for the past one year.
Agagbo said that the centre’s objective was to provide independent monitoring information on the different processes being implemented within the safety net programme.
She said the Third Party Monitoring (TPM) was one of the basic foundational elements in promoting social investment and accountability within the context of any government or donor funded programme.
She said the total population of beneficiaries sampled across the 19 states was 235,744 beneficiaries which represented 50.9 per cent of the overall total on the payroll of the cash transfer programme.
