The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Nentawe Yilwatda, has raised the alarm that some politicians were trying to influence the Cash Transfer Register.
Yilwatda, a guest on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme on Monday, said some people want his ministry to bend for political reasons, but that would not happen.
“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 activity.
“Some people want us to bend and allow the governors or the states to generate and send the list. 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 the political party; poverty doesn’t know the tribe; poverty doesn’t even understand the grammar we are blowing. A poor person is a poor person,” he said.
According to the minister, though 19.8 million poor Nigerians were captured on the nation’s social register to qualify for social safety funds, the government has validated only the identities of 1.2 people.
Yilwatda said he had suspended cash transfers and that, for audit and transparency purposes, the National Identification Number (NIN) and Bank Verification Number (BVN) were now compulsory for all digital transfers.
“It is going to be digital. This time around, we are carrying the CSOs along so that for all payments, we will ask them to verify, they can do follow-ups, and we can be transparent about what we are doing.
“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 it. For now, only about 1.2 million people have been validated.
“We need to validate the entire register to 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.
“So that we are sure they exist and that these people are as poor as they claim because there are social indices for judging poverty like access to water, health, education, and economic facilities. So that you can now pick the poorest of the poor in the society,” he added.
