By Miracle Ogunde
As part of President Bola Tinubu’s push to cushion the impacts of economic hardship on vulnerable Nigerians, the Federal Government is targeting 15m households and 75m people in its conditional cash transfer scheme.
Recall that President Tinubu suspended the scheme – administered by the National Social Investment Programme – in January owing to alleged corruption in programme.
But in February, the Federal Government said it was restarting the scheme and is targeting an extra 12 million households that could qualify for these direct payments.
According to the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management, and Social Development Nentawe Yilwatda said that ₦25,000 will be paid to each household per month thrice in a year.
Featuring on Monday’s edition of Channels Television’s The Morning Brief, Yilwatda said “The president was so specific, there are policies that he brought in to see if that can ease those challenges for people at the lower end of the pyramid.”
“Number one, he said that we should reach out to 15 million beneficiaries under the conditional cash transfer to help ease the pain of Nigerians who are at the bottom level under our social register. That’s households, not individuals. Each household, we assume approximately has about five people.
“So, if we are, we’re targeting 15 million households, it means the President is targeting 75 million Nigerians to be affected by this conditional cash transfer.”
He further said the Federal Government has been able to reach five million persons so far and is working on sanitising the social register.
“Five million people have been reached so far. But this is the challenge that we had. The new policy of CBN requires that you must have a digital identity before you’re given any money to have transparency and traceability of any fund that is being made in Nigeria.
“So, for now, we have just about 1.4 million people on that register who have digital identities. Mark you, most people we are reaching out to are people who are not within the banking segment,” he said, adding that women were chosen as household leaders.
“We target women as household leaders. Because women take care of the children and the vulnerable,” Yilwatda said on the breakfast show.
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