The Federal Government says it has spent $261m out of the $500m loan obtained from the World Bank to fund its social investment programme, which launched between 2015 and 2016. The National Coordinator of the National Social Safety Net Coordinating Office, Iorwa Apera made this known in an interactive session with journalists stating that the fund covered the National Social Register and the Conditional Cash Transfer under the Federal Government’s poverty alleviation scheme.
Apera said, “The Federal Government took a facility of $500m from the World Bank to build the social register and do the cash transfer. So, the cash transfer of the Federal Government paying N5,000 (per household) is part of that suit of funding.
“Between 2016 and now, we’ve raised the social register to 4.6 million poor and vulnerable households across the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory.
“In 546 local government areas, 6,004 political wards, and 67,000 communities, of the $500m so far, we have spent about $261m, both in raising the register and paying the cash transfer of N5,000. So far, for the cash transfer, we are paying about one million poor and vulnerable households that are taken directly from the social register.”
According to him, the condition for the cash transfer is to mine from the social register directly to pay the poor people identified by their communities.
The NASSCO coordinator added that, as part of the accountability structure, civil society organisations made sure that the people benefitting from the conditional cash transfer were the same people identified by their communities in the social register.