Leadnaija
Nigeria Govt- The federal government intends to provide N75,000 in cash to roughly 70 million Nigerians who are considered to be among the “poorest of the poor.”
Prof. Nentawe Yilwatda, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, revealed this yesterday when he appeared on Arise Television’s The Morning Show.
Yilwatda said the ministry plans to implement the program throughout the 36 states of the Federation by the end of January 2025 to register up to 18.1 million Nigerian homes using the National Identity Number (NIN) system.
“We want to deploy by the end of January across 36 states to ensure we start harvesting the NIN number of 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 said.
“The target of the President is that we should target 15 million households. And an average household is about 4 to 5. We are discussing here roughly about 70 million households with about N75,000 per person this year,” the minister noted.
President Bola Tinubu’s plans to combat severe poverty and establish a more comprehensive social safety net include the project, The Guardian reported.
According to Yilwatda, the program will target about 70 million people nationally, with an average of 4 to 5 people living in each household.
Driving Digital Inclusion for the Poor
By working with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to boost NIN registrations, the program would help improve the digital IDs of low-income Nigerians. Yilwatda claims that doing this will assist expedite the procedure and guarantee that the database contains the most vulnerable populations.
“We are doing the data capturing, but for now, the poorest of the poor that we have in our data is only 1.4 million with NIN. We are working with NIMC, deploying resources, and conducting training. NIMC has brought in more devices under a program with the World Bank to assist us in data capturing for those without NIN numbers.”
The Minister detailed ongoing efforts, saying,
“We are training in some states like Rivers, Kwara, Abuja, and Nasarawa, among others, and deploying to these states in the first round. By the end of January, we want to deploy across the 36 states to start capturing the NIN numbers of up to 18.1 million households. This will enable us to make payments to them for Conditional Cash Transfers.”
Meanwhile, Nigerians have raised eyebrows on the sharing formula used to distribute the money as a lot of people said they don’t get any government grants.
Sarah William said,
“We only see in the news that the government is sharing money, but I don’t think I know of anyone who has benefitted from the money.”
Seyi Adams said,
“We all have BVN, NIN and other forms of identity. I believe the government have access to the data. They can make things easy by going to the data base whenever they want to give Nigerians any palliative. This will solve the problem of one person getting things that are meant for many.”Tap Here for the Full Story
