No fewer than 19.8 million poor Nigerians are currently on the social register created by the Federal Government to facilitate cash transfer to beneficiaries.
The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Nentawe Yilwatda, who disclosed this in an interview on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme yesterday, also revealed that some politicians were trying hard to influence poor Nigerians who make the social register to enjoy the government’s conditional cash transfer.
He, however, said though 19.8 million poor Nigerians were captured on the nation’s social register to qualify for social safety funds, only the identities of 1.2 million poor Nigerians had been validated by the government.
He said: “Currently, we have a social register; we have 19.8 people on the social register but when you have a list, you need to validate that list.
“For now, the people that have been validated are only about 1.2 million people. We need to validate the entire register, so we can get the actual people who are supposed to benefit from it, authenticate their locations; their houses where they are, and capture on GPS location — the location of their homes.
“This is to be sure they exist and be sure that these people are as poor as they claim because there are social indices for judging poverty, such as access to water, access to health, access to education, and access to economic facilities, so you can now pick the poorest of the poor in the society.”
The minister said some persons wanted his ministry to bend for political reasons but noted that “unfortunately it’s a partnership between us and the international community – the World Bank is involved, CSOs (civil society organisations) are involved and it’s not just a ministry’s activity.
“Some people want us to bend and allow the governors or the states to just generate the list and send. It’s a conditional transfer; conditions are attached to qualifying to benefit from the social safety net.
“So, we will not bend to allowing any political affiliation or attachment to this conditional cash transfer. Poverty doesn’t know political party, poverty doesn’t know tribe, poverty doesn’t even understand the grammar we are blowing. A poor person is a poor person.”
The minister said he suspended cash transfers, adding that National Identification Number, NIN, and Bank Verification Number, BVN, were now compulsory for all digital transfers for audit and transparency purposes.
“It is going to be clearly digital. This time around, we are carrying the CSOs along so that all payments, we will ask them to verify, they can do follow-ups and we can have some levels of transparency in what we are doing,” he said.
He said the government has targeted 15 million poor households with N75,000 per household.
Recall that the humanitarian ministry has courted controversies since its establishment by former President Muhammadu Buhari.
In October 2024, President Bola Tinubu appointed Yilwatda as replacement Betta Edu who was suspended in Janaury 2024 before her removal.
Controversy had enveloped Edu’s alleged involvement in the approval of N585,198,500.00 to be disbursed into a personal account but she denied the allegation and said there were plans to tarnish her image, and that she wouldn’t embezzle government funds.
Incidentally, Edu’s predecessor, Sadiya Farouq, was also probed over an alleged laundering of N37.1 billion during her tenure as a minister under the administration of ex-President Muhammadu Buhari.
