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Uche Usim, Abuja
The federal government on Tuesday revealed that 5,483,531 poor and vulnerable Nigerians from 1,349,517 households in 32 states have been captured on the National Social Register (NSR).
The Special Adviser to the President on Social Investment, Mrs. Maryam Uwais who made the revelation in Maiduguri on Tuesday at the 14th Anti-corruption situation room forum organized by the Human Environment Development Agenda (HEDA) said the process for enumeration and identification have commenced in the remaining states and was at various stages of completion.
According to her, the register is a strategic way of ensuring better and smoother administration of government’s social investment programmes across the country.
She said the NSR, which can be desegregated into age, gender, disability, educational levels, etc for proper planning of social intervention programmes at the national, state and local government levels, would also be available for third parties who intend to utilize the information therein for research and philanthropic activities.
Uwais, who was represented at the event by Sola Afolayan, the Monitoring and Evaluation Manager at the National Social Investment Office NSIO, also gave a hint about ongoing efforts to develop a Consolidated Beneficiary Register (CBR) comprising data collated from all the four components of the Social intervention programme of the federal government.
She told the forum that the identification efforts are being spearheaded by the National Social Safety Net Coordinating Office (NASSCO) to develop an authentic database of poor and vulnerable households through poverty mapping, community based targeting and a proxy means test on devices provided for the process.
The Presidential aide added that the CBR was being developed to facilitate visibility, tracking and measurement of the impact and growth of each beneficiary across all the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP).
According to her, all beneficiaries of the National Cash Transfer Programme are mined from the social register.
” NASSCO is also engaged in collating information relating to the nearest primary and secondary schools, payment service providers, primary healthcare agencies, access roads, power and network reception, in all the communities it engages”
Uwais, who harped on the need for Nigeria to leverage on the huge successes recorded so far in the execution of the SIPs to effectively wage the war on poverty in the country for rapid economic growth, said plans are underway to sustain the programme which has given a new lease of life to millions of poor and vulnerable Nigerians.
“A draft law has been prepared along with a five-year roadmap, which documents are being considered before finalization. Efforts are also underway to explore feasible sources of funding, for a sustained and concerted impact to ensure the strategic reduction of poverty and unemployment, within the constraints of restricted funding and unlimited population growth”
Chairman of the occasion, Professor Sadiq Isa Raddah, described corruption as the bane of Nigeria’s development, stressing that the fight against the illicit practice is a collective task that must be done for the country to make meaningful progress.
Raddah said efforts were being intensified by government to repatriate more of the “Abacha Loot” and other stolen Nigerian funds stashed away in foreign accounts abroad.
He said such funds when returned, would be well utilised to finance people oriented projects such as the National Social Investment Programme N-SIP
The forum which has as its theme: Increasing Transparency and Participation in the implementation of the Social Investment Programs provides a platform for public accountability in the utilization of funds budgeted and released for the SIPs.
Participants were drawn from Civil Society Organizations CSOs, Non Governmental Organizations NGOs, Labour Unions, Religious Organizations, Anti-Corruption Agencies, Women Groups, National Orientation Agency NOA, the Media as well as Beneficiaries of the N-SIP.
