Food palliative from the federal government would henceforth
be shared by the states.
This is according to Sadiya Umar-Farouk, the minister of
humanitarian affairs, disaster management and social development.
State governors had recently requested that they are allowed
to oversee the distribution of palliatives to cushion the effects of COVID-19.
Speaking at the taskforce’s daily briefing on Monday,
Umar-Farouk said: “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 southeastern states of Imo
and Ebonyi specifically.”
On the disbursement of cash to the vulnerable poor, she
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.
“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 pilots 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 is
not a one day off thing, it takes a process.
“We are using mobile phones, wallets because the BVN of
these beneficiaries exists but it is not all of them that are on the banking
system. So we are looking at all these issues.”
The minister said processes to expand the register have
begun adding that the main focus would be 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 on registering these people with special needs.”
In a national broadcast on Monday night, President Muhammadu
Buhari directed that the social register be expanded by one million households
with the next two weeks.
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