The Federal Government said it would henceforth work with state governments to reach out to beneficiaries of its palliatives arranged to assuage the harsh effects of anti-COVID-19 measures.
The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Mrs Sadiya Umar-Farouk, made this disclosure, yesterday, at the daily briefing of the task force.
Responding to a question on whether the Federal Government was thinking of changing the strategy of sharing the palliatives, owing to criticism from quarters, the minister said the country had a national response plan on ground, with representatives from the national to local government on board.
She said all tiers of government were represented in the committee that had been distributing relief materials to the vulnerable.
“Going forward, we have decided to handover this food relief to the state governors for onward redistribution to their citizens, the poor and vulnerable in the society. In fact, I have started that. I was in Lagos last week and Ogun states and I have handed over trucks of food relief to these governors.
“So far, we have reached out to the three affected states that have been locked down by the federal government, the two states plus the FCT. Also, we have deployed some food relief to two south-eastern states of Imo and Ebonyi specifically”, she said.
On the disbursement of cash to the poor and vulnerable, the minister said, “I have mentioned it before that this is an approval that has been in existence since 2016 and we are using the exiting register. We will give them N5,000 per month but now that Mr. President has directed that we give two months advance, that is why we are giving this N20,000. Yes, it is a process that is really cumbersome, but with transparency and accountability the ministry has already begun the digitalization of this process.
“We have four pilot states that are on digital payroll so far and we are continuing with that. We hope that in our next month payment we will be able to, at least, have all the states adopt digital payment. It is not a one day off thing, it takes a process. And we are using mobile phones, wallets because the BVN of these beneficiaries exist but it is not all of them that are on the banking system. So, we are looking at all these issues”, she explained.
On the possible expansion of the register, Farouk said “yes, I did mention that we are working on the possible expansion of the register and this is to inform you that we have started the process. Our main focus now is going to be on the urban poor because these are the people that have now become vulnerable as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown.
“We are also focusing on people living with disabilities. Already we have some numbers in our existing sub-national social register but now we are going to focus more in registering these people with special needs”, she said.