Palliatives: Forum faults NEC on credibility of social register

By Stanley Onyekwere

A group of civil society organisations and media, working on the social protection space, the National Social Protection Forum (NSPF) has faulted the National Economic Council (NEC) for discrediting the National Social Register (NSR), saying “the register was developed in line with global best practices”.

Recall that the NEC had on July 21, directed state governments to develop a comprehensive social register for vulnerable people on the grounds that the current NSR lacks credibility.

However, the forum, in a statement signed by its National Coordinator, Dr Taiwo Benson, in Abuja on Monday, described the development as “very unfortunate”, considering the huge resources that went into developing the register.

It said the register is highly credible considering its bottom-up approach, with active community participation in defining and identifying the poor and vulnerable households among them.

According to the forum: “We wish to state categorically that the register was developed and compiled using transparent and participatory processes.

“The development process, which was community-based, involved multi-sectoral stakeholders, led by local and state government officials across the 36 states and the FCT, in line with global best practices.”

The NSPF explained that the register was developed through a community-based targeting approach.

They said that the approach, supported by the World Bank, involves the community defining what poverty and vulnerability means to them, and based on their definition, identifies the poor and vulnerable among them.

Also, the identified poor and vulnerable households were then enumerated and captured, using a digital platform.

“The final stage is the Proxy Means Test, where data is gathered by the enumerators. is used to create a proxy of incomes and needs of the households.

“The households were then ranked into deciles of the poorest and the most vulnerable in each community.

“The NSR, therefore, is a repository of poor and vulnerable households, aggregated from the states’ Social Registers”, they said.

Furthermore, the group said rather than jettison the NSR or the SSR, the Federal and State governments should take time to understand the development process and address identified gaps to improve quality.

They stressed that there was no perfect social register anywhere in the world, but flexible enough to accommodate emerging trends and needs and could be subjected to periodic reviews and updates.

The forum said that register as at June 30 consisted of 15.73 million households made up of 62.82 million individuals covering 177,421 communities in 8,000 electoral wards from 764 Local government areas.

They added that nine million individuals from four million poor and vulnerable households in the register have bank accounts as part of continued efforts to ensure financial inclusion.

“The NSR has been applauded internationally because of the integrity and credibility of the data, while several countries have visited Nigeria to study the development process of the register.