FG Impacting 9m Nigerians Through Social Investment Programmes

Mrs Maryam Uwais, the Special Adviser to the President on Social Investment Programme, says the Federal Government has impacted about nine million Nigerians through its various social investment programmes.

Uwais said this at a sensitisation meeting of stakeholders on activities of the National Social Safety Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO) in Abuja on Monday.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that NASSCO oversees the development of social registry, cash transfer unit, the YESSO programme and the Community Social Development Programme.

“We have the N-Power programme, the home grown school feeding programme and government enterprising programme and we have already achieved 67 of our target.

“We have impacted about nine million Nigerians, 1.7million secondary beneficiaries and on our social register we have about 503,000 people and this number is about to be increased.

“On our home grown feeding programme, we have 300,000 care givers, 8.6 million children are being fed in primary schools across 34 states, we are in 7,299 schools and working with 90,607 schools.

“For our N-Power programme, we have deployed for the past two years about 200,000 graduates/volunteers in every Local Government Area around the country in various sectors.

“They are being paid N30,000 each and the essence is for them to be able to do something for themselves and we intend to increase the number by 300,000 this year.

“We also have a non-graduate programme, which many Nigerians are already benefiting from,’’ Uwais said.

She stressed on the need for the media to properly propagate the mandate of NASSCO to enable Nigerians understand the programme for the sake of sustainability of the programme.

She said the Federal Government was trying to build a roadmap for social investment to ensure improvement of the country’s poverty indices.

In his remarks, Sen. Danjuma Lar, the Chairman Senate Committee on Poverty Alleviation, pledged the continued support of the Legislature and the Executive arm of government toward poverty alleviation in the country.

He said the National Assembly had been in support of all Federal Governments social intervention programmes and urged the participants to ensure purposeful deliberations toward alleviating poverty in the country.

Prof. Foluso Okunmadewa, the World Bank Task Team Leader, said the bank was supporting various programmes in the country and pledged the banks continued support to NASSCO.

Mr Iorwa Apera, the National Coordinator, NASSCO, said the mandate of the office was to build a data base of Poor and Vulnerable Households (PVHHs) in the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

“It is aimed at setting up standards to support and coordinate all social safety nets interventions and programmes in the country.

“NASSCO has established State Operations Coordinating Offices (SOCO) in 34 states and the FCT and registered 503,055 households with a total of 1,999,102 individuals.

“To accelerate the pace of enrolling PVHHs unto the register, the contributions of all stakeholders is critical,’’ Apera said.

He reiterated the importance of the National Social Register (NSR), saying it “provides gateway for people to register and be considered for potential inclusion in social programmes.

“NSR is an information system that supports the outreach, intake, registration and determination of potential eligibility for one or more social programmes.

“It supports registration of potential eligibility for social programmes and contains information on all registrants,’’ he said.

Apera added that the Office planned on integrating social registers of the 36 states and the FCT in the NSR and institutionalise the NSR as a gateway to targeting key social protection programmes in the country.

The meeting was attended by elites and representatives of SOCO from the various states of the federation.