The National Social Safety Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO) has stated that the country’s social register is a compilation of registries from all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
This was communicated via a tweet on Friday.
This position from NASSCO follows criticisms from the National Economic Council (NEC), which recently expressed concerns about the credibility of the national social register during discussions on relief measures for Nigerians.
Presided over by Vice-President Kashim Shettima, the NEC suggested disregarding the existing social register, originally compiled under former President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.
Instead, they recommended a cash transfer programme for states based on their individual social registers, as well as a six-month cash reward policy for public servants.
NASSCO in reaction to the statement wrote, “The national social register is an aggregation of state registers built by each of the 36 states and the FCT.
“States build the register using a community-based targeting approach undertaken by targeting teams and enumerators engaged by states and overseen by their ministries of planning.
“NASSCO and the NBS Nigeria work collaboratively on a number of fronts around poverty, most notably on the national living standards survey (NLSS).”
The National Social Investments Programme (NSIP) was established by the federal government in 2016.
The program aims to address short-term and long-term socio-economic imbalances and inequality. Its initiatives focus on distributing resources more evenly to vulnerable populations in Nigeria.
To launch this program, the government approved an immediate release of N25 billion.
