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From Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
Minister of Humanitarian Services, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouk, yesterday, said those saying the N5,000 monthly national cash transfer to vulnerable households are insufficient are elitist in their thinking.
She said this in reaction to a question on how relevant the cash transfer initiative is to the administration’s plan to save 100 million Nigerians from extreme poverty at the weekly ministerial briefing, organised by the presidential media team in Abuja.
Farouk, who gave a detailed brief of the activities of the ministry, said reports from the field during direct contact with beneficiaries have shown that the amount has helped them to escape the precarious situation of their social status to a better one.
The minister, however, noted that the intervention may not be fitting for yet another class of Nigerians to whom the N5,000 would not be sufficient for their everyday needs, like recharge chards for their phones.
“If you look at the people that we are taking this intervention to, N5,000 means a lot to them because these are poor and vulnerable households and it changes their status, but for you and me, N5,000 is not even enough for us to buy recharge card, that’s the difference.
“But for these poor people in the communities, you have seen, they were able to save out of that N5,000, if it’s not making any impact, if it’s not changing their economic status, I don’t think anybody will force them to contribute that N1,000 to provide that vehicle for their use. So, N5,000 goes along way.
“When people say N5,000 does not save people, that is an elitist statement, honestly because we’ve had causes to go to the field, and we have seen these people that when you give them this N5,000, they cried and shed tears because they’ve never seen N5,000 in their lives. So, it goes a long way, it changes their status and by that, it lifts them from one stage to another,” she said.
Meanwhile, Farouk has said recent findings by the ministry revealed that the problem of out-of-school children is not just a northern problem but a national malaise.
She said a recent survey in Makoko, Lagos, Enugu and Jos, revealed that the situation is widespread as there are about 7,000 of such children in Makoko alone.
Farouk was responding to queries on whether the school feeding programme of the Federal Government had impacted positively on the country by reducing the number of out-of-school children.
While noting that the school feeding programmes has led to increased school enrolment, the Coordinator of the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), Umar Bindir, who the minister directed to provide the figures, said there was the need to make people understand that it is a national problem.
He said: “Some people here, if you talk about out-of-school children, they think you are talking about almajiri in the North. Some people think, it’s actually religious or a Muslim thing. But I can tell you in this programme, we have established it as a national issue.
“We sent a team to Lagos. They went to Mokoko, they met 7,000 out-of-school children picking things from the dirt. The guy came shaking. We sent another chap to Jos, he came shaking also. We sent another guy to Enugu, and for the first time, everybody realised that out-of-school children is a national problem.”
