-
….Says existing social register lacks integrity ….Insists poorest 25% of Nigerians unbanked
-
….FG to distribute 252, 000 metric tons of grains to states
By Egena Sunday Ode
The National Economic Council (NEC) on Thursday unanimously resolved to do away with the national social register used by the Muhammadu Buhari administration to implement its conditional cash transfer.
Arising from its meeting at the presidential villa, Abuja the council informed that the register had integrity issues as the criteria for its compilation was unclear.
Briefing newsmen, 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.
Flanked by his Bauchi and Ogun State colleagues, Bala Mohammed and Dapo Abiodun, respectively, Soludo noted that beneficiaries of the supposedly transfered cash could not be identified in the villages.
He said 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.
“We need to face the problem of the fact that we don’t have a credible register,” he said.
Soludo affirmed that NEC deliberated on ways to cushion the impact of the recent petroleum subsidy removal.
He said: “Second thing I’d like to respond to is in relation to the social register that has been mentioned. I think at the council today, there was almost near unanimity among members. That there’s a big question mark about the integrity of the so called National Social Register. We have questions about how those names in the register were brought about and I’m sure one question I hear asked is where it is for the most vulnerable group, and so on and so forth.
“But let me even give you an example. If you’re just thinking about it. Let’s talk about a social register. And that distributing things through the social register by digital means, implying that these people already have account numbers and they have phone numbers. Maybe they must be talking about some other people, not Nigerians. The poorest 25 percent of Nigerians are largely if not totally unbanked, and they don’t have access to your telephone. It is of the poorest of the poor of our society.
“Now in thinking through that, we felt that sitting in Abuja and calling on somebody in Anambra to compile a list and send it to you. And then the person depends on who he brings, and the registers are generated and people go to those villages and ask where are those people and people don’t show up. This is stress testing it. And we think that we need to go down back to the drawing board and if you are delivering any such national or federal programme from Abuja, it needs to be delivered via the constituent governments that are there using their own format and mechanisms to generate the register that is comprehensive. That meets certain criteria, that you can stress test and you can call out the people in the village and everyone will confirm that these are the vulnerable people, if you are targeting vulnerable people, as it were.
“So the integrity test is what is missing with that register. Many have just described what is being counted as national register as either bogus. Some described it as phantom, some in all manner of terms. So we need to face the problem, the fact that we don’t have a credible register and get back to work on this.”
Soludo also said NEC recommended the possibility of wage increase, but added that it had to be placed on the table at the appropriate time.
He said :”And by the way, there’s something that I think my colleagues missed out as part of those recommendations over the medium, longer term, and that is the possibility of negotiating a new minimum wage. That obviously will be on the table. But that has to be negotiated through the appropriate structures for doing that over time.”
The Bauchi State governor, Senator Bala Mohammed said that the Federal Government will distribute 252 thousand metric tons of grains to states at a subsidised rate to cushion the effect or subsidy removal.
Mohammed said that the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA, will also make available to the people its package.
.On his side, Governor Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State said that though the hardship the masses are facing as a result of the removal of fuel subsidy was not the doing of the government as the market forces determines the price, efforts were being made to cushion its effect.
Some of the packages include cash transfer to the poorest of the poor by the states, cash award policy for all public servants which should be implemented for six months in first instance, payment to public servants on outstanding liabilities such as pension, allowances among others.
He also said that the government is looking at the possibility of funding Micro Small and Medium Enterprises.MSME, which he said are the engine room of business.
He further said the government plans immediate implementation of energy transition plants, converting mass transit buses to Compressed Natural Gas, CNG, adding that the long term vision was to establish electric automobile plants.
On his part, the acting Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Folashodun Shonubi said the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, briefed the council and announced that it was ahead of the half year target.
He said, “Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue making a presentation on what they have done so far, the level of collections. It was nice to know that they are ahead of their target for half year. And we expect that before or by the time the year ends they would exceed.
“They also gave us some idea of what next year should be like from them. And from this year, we hope to make some N10 trillion. It is planning that next year, we should be able working with all the agencies provide N25 trillion as their contribution to the national coffers.”
