• FG’s Intervention Must Be Science-driven Or It’ll Fail, Says Olurode
For 38-year-old Joseph Musa, a mason in Abuja, life has not been too rosy, considering his meagre earnings and the enormous burden of having to fend for his family of four.
According to him, surviving has become even more difficult since the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu-administration was sworn-in, no thanks to the multiplicity of economic policies and reforms that it has been introducing without corresponding measures to cushion the shock effects on low-income earners.
Musa is, however, not alone. From Lagos to Benin, Jos, Makurdi, Kafanchan, Yobe, Uyo and Port Harcourt, there are millions of under-privileged Nigerians who are groaning under the weight of the ripple and harsh effects of President Tinubu’s knee-jerk policies while government ponders it options.
President Tinubu recently ordered a review of a proposed palliative initiative, which was meant to have N8,000 distributed to 12 million households over a six-month period through the social register.
The Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs had in the last few years, especially for the larger part of President Muhammadu Buhari’s tenure, been doing cash transfers to the poor using the social register.
But with many less-privileged Nigerians having continually questioned the authenticity of the register, claiming that they have received no cash transfer to date, who then are the poor that have been beneficiaries of government’s intervention?
The Federal Government had made moves to take yet another loan of $800 million, (about N621,200,000,000), from the World Bank, with the intention of distributing it through the social register as part of palliatives aimed at cushioning the effect of subsidy removal.
Justifying the need to borrow the money, President Tinubu’s spokesman, Dele Alake, said: “The purpose of the facility is to expand coverage of shock response safety among the poor and vulnerable Nigerians. Twelve million poor households will be paid N8, 000 per month for six months. This is in addition to the free grains, fertilisers and other farm input.”
However, against the backdrop of the controversy surrounding who the poor that have benefited from previous interventions in the forms of cash transfers and COVID-19 palliative are, the National Economic Council has rejected the Social Register as a veritable avenue of distributing such.
IN a move that may now assuage the cries of the less-privileged who have been calling to question, the authenticity of the register, the Council, last week, unanimously resolved not to use the national social register put in place by the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration to implement the Tinubu’ administration’s conditional cash transfer.
Rising from its monthly meeting at the State House, Abuja, on Thursday, the Council stressed that the register had integrity issues as the criteria for its compilation was unclear.
Briefing newsmen after the meeting presided over by Vice President Kashim Shettima, Governor Charles Soludo of Anambra State said contrary to what the previous administration projected, it is not possible to digitally transfer money to the poorest of the poor the majority of whom are unbankable.
Soludo, who was in the company of his Bauchi and Ogun States colleagues, Bala Mohammed and Dapo Abiodun, respectively, noted that beneficiaries of the supposedly transferred cash could not be identified in the villages.
He said: “We need to face the problem of the fact that we don’t have a credible register.”
According to him, NEC resolved that the states should come up with their own registers using formal and informal means to develop it, assuring that all beneficiaries at the subnational level could easily been accessed that way.
PREVIOUS interventions by the government were carried out under the National Social Safety Nets Project, (NASSP), through the National Social Safety Nets Coordinating Office, (NASSCO), under the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development and resident at the presidency.
Questions on how the government is able to determine the actual number of poor and vulnerable Nigerian and the criteria for determining this group of individual had been rife.
Shedding light on some of the key criteria for the determination of the poor and vulnerable in Nigeria deserving government intervention, Communication Manger, NASSCO, Joseph Abuku, said: “The process of capturing individuals and households for the National Social Register commenced in 2016. The process is community-driven, and coordinated at the State level by State Operations Coordinating Unit (SOCU), under the oversight supervision of State Ministries of Budget and Planning.
“The targeting process adopted to identify poor individuals and households is the Community-Based Targeting (CBT), approach where members of a community are divided in groups of women, men, youth and in some cases persons with disabilities. They are then requested to define poverty within the context of their community and proceed to identify community members that they consider poor and vulnerable. Each of the groups would generate and list affected people and this is harmonised by all three groups. The list is made in three copies and signed off by a male and female community member, nominated to be the grievance redress volunteer, a copy of which is left with the community, the second copy is held by the Local Government Community Development Desk Office and the third copy is held by the state at SOCU.”
He added that “the list is then used by SOCU to deploy enumerators to the community to capture information about each of the households listed.
“To achieve these five categories of information are collected: Locational information, demographic information, socio-economic details, assets owned by the household and the dwelling characteristics of each household. The five categories of information cover about 138 data variables that must be filled for each household, including details of household members.”
The process, he said, “has taken place in over 150,000 communities, in 8000 federal wards and 764 LGAs across all 36 states and the FCT.
“The registers are owned by each state government, and the federal government only collects a copy of each State Social Register into the national database to form the National Social Register (NSR).
“The NSR is there for an aggregate of all State Social Registers (SSR). The SSR goes through various checks and validation processes before it is accepted it the database.”
Abuku explained that “NASSCO provides the oversight for the data quality and assurance, by deploying MIS, (Managing Information System), and systems check processes, including third party monitors engaged from Civil Society for the purpose of monitoring registration and payments processes, as well as grievance redress mechanism deployed to address complaints and concerns around inclusion and exclusion issues.”
According to the NSSP documents, the National Social Register is a partnership between the federal government and the World Bank to build a data of poor Nigerians that can be mined for social interventions, research and other benefits.
A national living standard survey was carried out in partnership with the National Bureau of Statistic, (NBS). MoUs were also signed with the states governments to this end.
In an earlier interview granted The Guardian, National Coordinator of the NASSCO, Mr. Iorwa Apera, said Nigeria has been able to develop one of the world’s largest social register.
He pointed that the register remains the country’s most comprehensive database of individuals, with detailed information on over 50 million poor and vulnerable citizens, including about 138 points of social indicators linked to every individual that is captured in the database.
“This programme had two major components – the first part was to strengthen and establish the building blocks for social protection implementation in Nigeria and establish the National Social Safety Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO); the second component was the targeted cash transfer to the poor and vulnerable and the establishment of the National Cash Transfer Office (NCTO) to manage the cash transfer exercise.”
Apera insisted that the National Social Register, as it is now, is the most prominent social register in the world, adding that “none is comparable with the number that we have in Nigeria. Secondly, it is the most comprehensive database of individuals in our country. It is made up of the information of over 50 million individuals. Each of those individuals has about 138 indicators attributed to them, from biodata to vocation, educational qualification, access to social amenities in the community, access to roads to the communities, access to drinking water, access to toilet facilities, dwelling places, disability status, whether disabled or not; and if disabled, what form of disability? It is that comprehensive.”
But reacting to what he called the “nation’s data debacle and palliative to vulnerable,” renowned sociologist, Lai Olurode noted that “certainly, the Presidency is bothered by the full ramifications of the removal of fuel subsidy from petroleum products. Secondly, it is aware that Nigeria’s poorest of the poor cannot withstand a full blown free for all market forces. Even, in the home of raw capitalism and conservatism where Adam Smith’s invisible hand is expected to display a free reign with no restrain, the milk of human kindness is directed at the poor, the old, vulnerable groups and farmers.
“Granted that social interaction by the Federal Government is desirable, the Nigerian government has data challenges. This is partly why previous interventions by all preceding governments had failed. Without being able to identify poorest household and without credible data base, whatever money or support in kind that is given out would go down the drains.
Some years back, a World Bank Report said that Nigeria is characterised by putting first things last. How else can one describe a situation of wanting to dish out palliative or support for the poor and the weak without a rigorous process in place to identify who they are. It is indeed a different issue that the amount is a paltry sum. My understanding of discussions around the N8000 per month for six months to 12 millions households is that targeted beneficiaries remain sceptical about the impact of the interventions. Most beneficiaries also prefer that the money be spent on roads and key infrastructure that cut across,” he stated.
He advised the Presidency is to employ social scientists and professional to assist it to draw up foul proof criteria with which to identify potential beneficiaries. “It is good that the federal government itself had discovered that it is far away from the grassroots and couldn’t handle effectively the programme. If we were working local governments, the exercise fall squarely on them.”
“The lesson in the dilemma that the federal government faces over this exercise of helping the poor is that unless it is driven by science, expected outcomes won’t be met. Not just on this intervention alone but in all other departments. Nigeria should always put its thinking cap rather than putting cart before the cattle. In whatever we do knowledge should come first and never last.”
THEGUARDIAN
