The National Economic Council, NEC, unanimously decided on Thursday to scrap the national social register used by the Buhari administration to implement conditional cash transfers, citing its lack of credibility.
As a result, it requested that states create their own registers for such cash transfers.
This comes as the federal government announced that it would distribute 252,000 metric tonnes of grains to states at subsidised rates in order to mitigate the impact of the removal of gasoline subsidies.
The majority of states, though, were unable to offer a precise date for the register’s availability.
The register, however, was deemed to have integrity issues at the NEC meeting, which Vice President Kashim Shettima presided over in the Council Chamber of the Presidential Villa. This was due to the ambiguity of the register’s compilation criteria.
Governor Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra State briefed State House reporters after the meeting and stated that, in contrast to what the previous administration had suggested, it was not possible to digitally transfer money to the poorest of the poor, the majority of whom were not bankable.
According to him, it was decided that states should create comprehensive registers and make sure they only included vulnerable people.
Professor Soludo noted that beneficiaries of the alleged cash transfers could not be identified in the villages, flanked by his colleagues from the states of Ogun and Bauchi, Bala Mohammed and Dapo Abiodun, respectively.
In order to ensure that all beneficiaries at the sub-national level could be easily accessed, he said NEC decided that the states should create their own registers using both formal and informal means.
He declared, “We need to address the issue that we do not have a reliable register.
Soludo confirmed that NEC thought about how to lessen the effects of the most recent removal of petroleum subsidies.
