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From Aniekan Aniekan, Calabar
The Cross River State Government has begun the payment of ₦50,000 each to over 29,000 vulnerable persons across the state under the Cross River Social Investment Programme.
The payment, which has started hitting beneficiaries’ accounts, follows months of registration and verification across all 196 wards of the state.
The State Coordinator of the programme, Dr Edem Okokon Effiom, who disclosed this in his office, clarified that the money was not from a controversial scheme circulating on social media, which he described as a scam.
“This is ₦50,000 coming from the Cross River State Government, courtesy of the benevolence Prince Bassey Otu,” he said.
He said the government was currently spending about ₦900 million on the programme, which was designed not as charity or a one-off grant, but as a sustained investment in people to lift them out of poverty.
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“Out of the 150 per ward, 100 are for Conditional Cash Transfer while 50 are skilled persons who need start-up capital to begin their trades but have no money to kick-start.
“The selection was done through churches, traditional institutions, women groups, youth groups and other social strata, with each group asked to nominate its most vulnerable members.
“We asked every strata: give us those who can barely fend for themselves. That is how we gathered the names,” he said.
He admitted that the register was not yet perfect, with challenges around account numbers and Bank Verification Numbers (BVN), but said officials were working round the clock to resolve them and continuously filter the list to ensure that only the truly needy benefited.
Effiom said the programme would be sustained, with a commitment from the governor to expand it into next year.
