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Eyes 15m households for data capturing
By Okwe Obi, Abuja
Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction Nentawe Goshwe Yilwatda has disclosed that only 1.4 million poor Nigerians have the National Identity Number (NIN).
Yilwatda stated that the figures were generated by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), adding that only poor Nigerians with any form of digital identity would be supported by the government.
According to him, the government would disburse money to poor Nigerians through their banks instead of handing over cash in communities, as recommended by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The minister, who appeared on a television programme on Wednesday, said: “The reason why the number of people reduced is because the president has directed, based on CBN’s new regulation, that before any payment is made to an individual or a household, they must have at least a digital identity, so that we can trace them, and that is the NIN.
“And so we are doing the data capturing. But for now, the poorest of the poor that we have on our database—only 1.4 million of them—have digital identity.
“That is, we can trace them using the NIN number. So already, we’re working with NIMC.
“We are doing training. NIMC has brought in more devices for us under a programme with the World Bank to assist us in data capturing for people who do not have digital numbers.
“And already, we are training in some states like Rivers, Kwara, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, Nasarawa, and some states, including Kano.
“We are deploying to those states as a first round, and by the end of this January, we want to deploy across all 36 states to ensure that we start harvesting the new number up to 18.1 million Nigerian households that we need to capture as fast as possible so that we can make payment for them.”
The minister disclosed that through the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT), the government plans to capture 15 million households, each of which will receive N75,000.