The government of Nigeria has increased the number of beneficiaries of National Social Investment Programmes (NSI) to one million in order to accommodate more people.
This was disclosed by the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq on Monday during press conference in Abuja.
According to the Humanitarian Affairs Minister, President Muhammadu Buhari raised the number of the beneficiaries of the programs, which include the Home-Grown School Feeding Programme, HGSFP, N-Power, Conditional Cash Transfer, CCT and Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme, GEEP, to accommodate more beneficiaries.
Read the statement below:
“In order to double the scope of the National Social Investment Programmes, Mr President has graciously approved the expansion of all NSIP programmes, such as increase of N-Power beneficiaries from 500,000 to 1,000,000, increase of GEEP beneficiaries by 1,000,000 and increase of beneficiaries of Home-Grown School Feeding by 5,000,000,” the minister disclosed.
“In championing social inclusion, deliberate efforts were made to capture vulnerable youth and groups which included women, people with special needs, in the expansion of the National Social Register by one million households. Also, in the Economic Sustainability Plan, we have over 1,000,000 urban poor in the National Social Register.
“As of June 2020, 4.41% of the total number of individuals captured in the National Social Register are recognised as Persons with Special Needs.
“This comes to a total of six hundred and eighty-five thousand and ninety (685,090) Persons with Special Needs in the National Social Register.”
“About 3.7 million households comprising more than 15.5 million individuals have been captured on the National Social Register.
“Of that number, over 2.8 million of the households which comprise 13.5 million Individuals are eligible for Conditional Cash Transfer.
“These numbers are spread across the 36 states and FCT. The numbers are further broken down to 7.6 million males and 7.9 million females.”
Which one do they increase, is it the new registered members that are yet to be shortlisted which were supposed to be 400,000 beneficiaries, or together with the exited beneficiaries?