Nigeria has resolved to build a National Social Register (NSR) for a reliable database of poor and vulnerable households, the Special Adviser to the President on Social Investment, Mrs. Maryam Uwais, has said.
Uwais, who was represented by Mr. Sola Afolayan, the Monitoring and Evaluation Manager, unveiled the plan in a keynote address at the 14th Anti-corruption situation room forum, organised by the Human Environment Development Agenda (HEDA) in Maiduguri, Borno State on Tuesday.
Uwais said that NSR could be “desegregated into age, gender, disability, educational levels’’, for proper planning of social intervention programmes at the national, state and local government levels.
She said it would also be available for third parties, who intend to utilise the information for research and philanthropic activities.
Uwais also highlighted the ongoing efforts to develop a Consolidated Beneficiary Register (CBR), comprising data collated from all the four components of the Social Intervention Programmes (SIPs) of the Federal Government.
The CBR was being developed to facilitate visibility, tracking and measurement of the impact and growth of each beneficiary across all the National Social Intervention Programmes (NSIP).
The aim is to develop an authentic database of poor and vulnerable households through Poverty Mapping, Community Based Targeting and a Proxy Means Test on devices provided for the process.
According to her, all beneficiaries of the National Cash Transfer Programme are mined from the Social Register.
“As at September 10, 2019, there were 1,349,517 poor and vulnerable households, comprising 5,483,531 individuals captured on the NSR across 32 States.
“The process for enumeration and identification has commenced in the states and at various stages of completion,’’ she said.
MM/GIK/APA