The Federal Government claims that over the past six years, it has distributed roughly $700 million from the repatriated Abacha looted funds to over 1.9 million poor and vulnerable households across the nation through the National Social Safety-Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO).
At the one-day dissemination meeting hosted by the Centre for Health Education, Economic Rehabilitation, and Social Security (CHEERS), which led nine other Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) for the Third-Party Monitoring (TPM) of the National Social Safety Net Program, Kabir Abdullahi, the Acting National Coordinator of NASSCO, revealed this (NASSP).
Due to logistical issues, recipients in around four states have not received payments for two years. The ICPC confiscated the funds when it noticed a huge amount of money, but the monies have since been recovered, and payments will now begin in earnest in the affected states.
According to Abdullahi, the NASSP project involves providing basic and conditional cash transfers to low-income and vulnerable households. He emphasized that recipients of the basic cash transfer receive N5,000 each month, while recipients of the conditional cash transfer receive an additional N5,000, for a total of N10,000 every two months.
According to him, there are currently 1,940,000 households on the list of conditional cash transfer recipients, and with continued enrollment, it is hoped that by the end of December 2022, there will be two million recipients overall.
In the meantime, the Federal Government’s implementation of the National Social Safety-net program has been praised by the CHEERS and other partner CSOs (NASSP).
Ajia Ogugua Agagbo, the executive director of CHEERS, the national lead TPM CSO, had earlier stated that the main issue encountered during the project’s implementation was that some of the beneficiaries experienced delays in receiving their payments. She urged the Federal Government to expand the program in order to reach more low-income and vulnerable households.
The beneficiary/awareness, community’s perception, and level of satisfaction with the program are to be objectively and independently accessed, together with the level of transparency and conformity with the established standard operating parameters for the program.
Agagbo disclosed that in addition to the 19 states and 280 LGAs that were previously observed during the Year 1 monitoring cycle, a total of 18 new states and 191 new LGAs were added. Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Ebonyi, Enugu, Delta, Edo, Bayelsa, Rivers, Zamfara, Kebbi, Sokoto, Yobe, FCT, Imo, Abia, Akwa Ibom, and Borno are among the newly added states.
