9m Nigerians Benefit From Social Investment Program – Presidency

Maryam Uwais (Photo Credit: Daily Trust)

About 9m individuals have benefited from the Cash Transfer Program (CTP) of the National Social Investment Program (NSIP), the federal government revealed on Monday.

Maryam Uwais, Special Adviser to the President on NSIP, revealed this on Monday, at the One-Day Sensitization Meeting of Stakeholders on Activities of the National Social Safety-Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO) which held at Abuja.

Uwais revealed that over 9.5 million schoolchildren across 24 states in the federation have benefited from the program, which is being coordinated by NASSCO.

“We are trying to build a roadmap for social investment to ensure the improvement on the poverty indices in Nigeria,” she said.

“With this, the government is able to start a program for people with very low inventory.

“In order to sustain this program, Nigerians need to know what it is all about.” she said.

Mr. Iorwa Apera, the National Coordinator, NASSCO revealed that State Operations Coordinating Offices (SOCU) in 34 states and the FCT has been established in collaboration with state governments.

According to the data, NASSCO has registered a total of Five hundred and Three Thousand, Fifty-Five (503,055) Households with a total of One Million Nine Hundred and Ninety-Nine Thousand, One Hundred and Two (1,999,102) individuals across 19 of the 34 states and the FCT.

“The mandate of NASSCO is to build a data base of poor and vulnerable households in the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) using appropriate targeting mechanism in the identification of the poor and vulnerable,” Apera explained.

“In addition, it is to set up standards to support Social Safety-Nets interventions in the country and coordinate all social safety nets intervention programmes in the country amongst others.

“The database under reference is domiciled in the Ministry of planning in every state and could be used for planning and decision making nationwide.

“This database could also be accessed by development partners for social interventions.” he said.

The Nation reports that he also admonished the state government to forward the names of the poor and vulnerable households in the state to the national level.

“In order for there to be synergy between the state and national registry and recorded data, we need the stakeholders of each state to send us their own registry of poor and vulnerable households in Nigeria.” he said