By Olu Adeyinka
The National Coordinator of the National Safety Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO) Mr Apera Iorwa said no fewer than 665,655 poor and vulnerable households exists and have been mapped in 26 states across the country.
The mapping of the poor and vulnerable is the first leg in the Federal Government’s social safety initiative which aimed to pull the poor out of poverty.
Iorwa, stated this in Lagos on Thursday, during the inauguration of the Lagos State Operations Coordinating Unit Lagos SOCU, which took place at the State’s Ministry of Economic Planning and Budgets.
The National Coordinator who said the journey to having Lagos State join the rest of the country in implementing the programme and initiatives targeted at the poor and the vulnerable said NASSCo is happy that Lagos is finally joining other states across the country in mapping the poorest of the poor from its local governments for the purposes of intervention.
Addressing UNICEF officials led by Mr Mohammad Okere, and other top level government officials drawn from ministries of Wealth Creation and Employment; Youths Sports and Social Development, and Women Affairs and Poverty Alleviation (WAPA), the Coordinator, said, besides the initial intervention of N300 million, the Federal Government ensured the repatriated $850 million Abacha fund is domiciled and managed by NASSCO as social intervention funds for the vulnerable and the poor in the country.
He said NASSCO’S mandate is to generate from across all the 36 states and Abuja, a credible National Social Register from where the poor and vulnerable members of the society can be mined for the purposes of any intervention that may be targeted at them by all levels or tiers of government.
“The major assignment before the SOCU officials is to coordinate the social safety nets programmes of the government aimed at lifting the poor and the vulnerable out of the nets of poverty. To achieve this, SOCU is to embark on the mapping of the state in order to generate a Social Register of the Poor and Vulnerable households, which would be escalated to the NASSCO office for inclusion into the national register.
“SOCU would, using the date generated by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), determine the poorest local governments in the state. It will take this the affected local governments to identify the poor and vulnerable households which would be uploaded to the national social register. The report would be generated along the three natural groups male, women and youths.”
Iorwa said the vulnerable poor would have the access to enjoy N5,000 intervention fund transfer, while the youth would be open to skill acquisition and job employment opportunities that would push them out of the poverty net.
The national Coordinator said the fund transfer is currently ongoing in 169 states of the federation, and the Internally Displace Persons (IDP) centres in Borno State, adding that NASSCO is eagerly waiting for Lagos to come up within the shortest possible time with its data in order to further reduce the incidences of poverty and lack among its citizens.
“We are happy to inaugurate the Lagos SOCU, and its broad mandate is to generate the social register for the state and to help manage the five pillars of social intervention programmes of the Federal Government as well as any other programmes that the state might design as intervention for these vulnerable sector of the society by the state government as it’s the case with other state governments,” Iorwa added.
The Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget Olusegun Banjo said Governor Akinwunmi Ambode approved the establishment of the unit because of its obvious benefit to generate a social register that would lead to conditional and unconditional transfer to the poor and vulnerable segment of the people.
He said the National Social Safety Nets has led to effective targeting and vulnerable households across the country, adding that the initiative had all elements of belivability because it has the support of World Bank, UNICEF, and other development partners.
In her goodwill message, the Permanent Secretary Ministry of wealth Creation and Employment who was represented by Mrs Lola Kaka said the intervention would assist the state achieve more in its strides to reach more vulnerable segments of her population.
The State Coordinator Mrs Olukemi Adedeji who praised Governor Ambode for approving the unit, said her team is adequately prepared to achieve the set targets and give the state a credible social register that would be transparent and reliable for planning.