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Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
The Federal Government has said it plans to expand the social register for palliative distribution by employing digital models including the use of Bank Verification Number (BVN).
This is even as it said there is no plans yet to reopen the school as the lockdown meant to flatten the curve of coronavirus (COVID-19), enters week four.
The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, Sadiya Farouq, while responding to questions at Presidential Task Force briefing on COVID-19 on how to identify the poor and the most vulnerable for the government’s palliatives, said deploying digital means will be faster and make the distribution more effective.
Farouq said: “We are using other models including BVN to identify bank accounts. We are also using mobile phone networks to identify poor and vulnerable people in the society.
“This is going to be faster, transparent and give room for more accountability.”
Speaking on the conditional cash transfer to poor households which is currently going on in some parts of the country, she said it is being done in a transparent and well organized manner.
She also said contrary to claims on social media, there are no duplication of households that benefit from the palliatives because of the measures in place.
According to her, the involvement of civil groups, traditional and religious leaders, among others who are performing the role of identifying the poor in their communities, it makes it impossible for households to be duplicated.
Recalled that the
National leader of All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu had earlier urged the Federal Government to make cash payments to households through Bank Verification Numbers (BVN) as palliative.
Tinubu said the move would help cushion the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on Nigerians and noted that the government can make direct deposits into individual bank accounts using the BVN of prospective recipients.
Meanwhile, the Minister of state education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, has said there are no plans to reopen schools just yet.
According to him, “We will also be looking at what we will do for schools reopen. As you will recall that we had asked that schools vacate in the middle part of March, no it will be a congregated effort in all the states because the lockdown in various parts will definitely affect how students will go to school or not.
“So it goes without saying that nobody can reopen schools for now except we coordinate all of our efforts.
“We are also appealing to parents to help us, the point where we are now, we are asking that students can learn online. We have made a lot of provisions for that and the directorate of ICT has opened a portal and in conjunction with UBEC as the coordinating agency, in alliance with all the SUBEBS in all the states to buy into a programming module.
Right now, what has happened is that about 14 or 15 states have commenced learning via different channels that are available in their state, mostly radio and local TV. What they are running is an approved Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) curriculum, everything that we said we will learn all that our teachers need to do. That is ongoing at the moment. Not all the states have stated the programme but Lagos, Anambra, about 14 of them and the run different programming times.
“We have also in collaboration with ministry of information through NTA and FRCN to escalate what they normally have as their educational content, we are still working on that. That is an ongoing programme.
“We believe those in primary and secondary schools are already doing some sort of work with that. We are also available to them to key into things that we have, all our platforms are available to them. Our biggest challenge is to reach children who do not have devices on the fringes of our communities. And because they do not have that, that is why we are pressing on with Radio Corporation and NTA. “We already have programmes running along those lines with adult education, we jut want to distill all of that and make it available to all. As you are aware is a concurrent matter in our constitution and therefore we can’t unilaterally imposed some level of education on states, they must be some form of buy-in. We are meeting with SUBEBS regularly so that they can do what is suitable to them.
“On tertiary education, some private universities already have online education in which they learn. We are also making resources available, we are assisting them. We really must thank all participants because everybody has offered us support from content providers to online networking agents, platform providers, MTN, Glo, 9Mobile, Airtel, everyone is giving what they have. We are willing to absorb all of that and make it available to everybody with any kind of limitations that you are facing from your end. It is our work to address that, we are here to serve.”
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