Why Beneficiaries Of N5,000 Cash Transfer Are Not Known – Presidency

President Muhammadu Buhari’s senior special assistant on digital and new media, Tolu Ogunlesi, has explained why Nigerians may likely not know beneficiaries of the federal government’s N5,000 conditional cash transfer.

Ogunlesi said the reason was because the National Social Register (NSR) being used to disburse the money was currently focused on the poor in the rural areas, and as such urban dwellers might not know them.

The presidential aide, in a series of tweets on Saturday, said this in response to critics of the government’s National Social Investment Programmes (N-SIP) who claim they were yet to meet any beneficiary of the cash transfer programme.

On how beneficiaries get paid, Ogunlesi said the federal government, “makes available the funding, and training and technical support,” while the state governments, “provide the personnel who will compile the Register and pay the beneficiaries.”

Meanwhile, the N-SIP comprises other federal government programmes to include the N-Power, the Home-Grown School Feeding Programme, the Conditional Cash Transfer, the Enterprise and Empowerment Programme, among others.

The federal government had said in January that an estimated 5,433,394 vulnerable Nigerians were benefiting from the cash transfer programme.

A report by the National Social Safety Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO) said beneficiaries of the programme were drawn from 1,080,240 households in 35,490 communities across 395 local government areas in 32 states.