The Special Adviser to the President on Social Investments Mrs Maryam Uwais, has clarified the report making round on social media that 6.6m poor Nigerians benefited from the Cash Transfer policy of the federal government.
She noted that such information was false adding that, only 620,947 poor Nigerians were currently benefiting from the social investment programs of Cash Transfer.
Uwais urged Nigerians to discard the social media report making round all over social media platforms.
She made the clarification in press statement issued on Saturday.
Media reports had quoted the Presidential aide as saying that 6.6 million people were being paid the N5,000 monthly stipend (Cash Transfer Initiative).
Uwais also noted that nothing has changed in the budgetary allocation for the program.
She said “Although 1,491,296 households, comprising 6,056, 872 individuals have been captured on the National Social Register, only 620,947 of them are currently receiving the monthly payments and are being supported by trained community facilitators.
“I also want to clarify reports making the rounds that the Federal Government made a budgetary provision of N30 billion for 2020, as against the usual 500 billion benchmark for the N-SIP since 2016.
“Nothing has changed in the budgeting cycle as relates to the Social Investment Programmes (SIP).
“The SIP budget has always been pegged at N400 billion, while another N100 billion has been domiciled in the Federal Ministry of Finance, as counterpart of the Social Housing Fund.”
The special adviser stressed that despite the delay in release of budget allocation for the program, the social investment program recorded a great success adding that, over 13 million people have benefitted from the program.
Uwais said “In 2016, we got 16 per cent of our budget; we got 36 per cent in 2017, and 53 per cent in 2018.
“But, in spite of the shortfalls in budgetary releases, the National Social Investment Programme has been very successful.
“It has impacted on 13 million people across the country, with 44 million as secondary beneficiaries comprising families, agents, farmers and others in the value chain,”
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