Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Nentawe Yilwatda, says some politicians including state governors are trying to influence beneficiaries captured in the social register for the federal government’s conditional cash transfer.
The minister, who was a guest on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily, said some persons want his ministry to bend for political reasons
According to him, “unfortunately, it’s a partnership between us and the international community involving also the World Bank and civil society organisations (CSOs).
“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, tribe and doesn’t understand grammar. A poor person is a poor person.”
The minister said he suspended the 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 we will ask them to verify all paymentsm. They can do follow-ups and we can have some levels of transparency in what we are doing,” he said.
The minister said 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.
“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 that 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 including the location of their homes.
“So that we are sure they exist and be sure that these people are as poor as they claim because there are social indices for judging poverty like access to water, access to health, access to education, and access to economic facilities.
“These yardsticks will enable us to pick the poorest of the poor in the society”, he added.
He said the government targets 15 million poor households with N75,000.
The humanitarian ministry has courted controversies since its establishment by former President Muhammadu Buhari.
In October 2024, President Bola Tinubu appointed Yilwatda to replace Betta Edu who was suspended in January 2024 before her removal under controversial circumstances.
Edu was accused of alleged involvement in the approval of N585,198,500.00 to be disbursed into a personal account.
She however denied the allegation and maintained that they were all part of plans to tarnish her image.
Incidentally, Edu’s predecessor, Sadiya Farouq, was also probed over an alleged laundering of N37.1 billion under the administration of ex-President Buhari.
