15m households to benefit from FG’s N25k cash transfer scheme, says Humanitarian Minister

The federal government has announced that no fewer than 15m households and 75m people would be captured in its conditional cash transfer scheme.

The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management, and Social Development, Nentawe Yilwatda, while disclosing the move was part of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s push to cushion the impacts of economic hardship on vulnerable Nigerians, said each household will be paid ₦25,000 per month thrice in a year.

“The president was so specific; there are policies that he brought in to see if that can ease those challenges for people at the lower end of the pyramid,” he said on Monday’s edition of Channels Television’s The Morning Brief.

“Number one, he said that we should reach out to 15 million beneficiaries under the conditional cash transfer to help ease the pain of Nigerians who are at the bottom level under our social register. That’s households, not individuals. Each household, we assume, approximately has about five people.

“So, if we are, we’re targeting 15 million households, it means the President is targeting 75 million Nigerians to be affected by this conditional cash transfer.”

The minister said the Federal Government has reached five million persons so far and is working on sanitising the social register.

READ ALSO: Tinubu cancels yuletide events to honour victims of palliative distribution stampedes

“Five million people have been reached so far. But this is the challenge that we had. The new policy of CBN requires that you must have a digital identity before you’re given any money to have transparency and traceability of any fund that is being made in Nigeria.

So, for now, we have just about 1.4 million people on that register who have digital identities. Mark you, most people we are reaching out to are people who are not within the banking segment,” he said, adding that women were chosen as household leaders.

“We target women as household leaders. Because women take care of the children and the vulnerable,” Yilwatda said on the breakfast show.

President Tinubu suspended the scheme – administered by the National Social Investment Programme –  in January owing to alleged corruption in the programme.

But in February, the Federal Government said it was restarting the scheme and is targeting an extra 12 million households that could qualify for these direct payments.

Source: Channels TV