The World Bank has promised to support the Nigerian government with $800 million to boost its ongoing Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) initiative with a target of 15 million households aimed at reducing poverty level in the country.
The Vice President of World Bank in Western and Central Africa, Mr. Ousmane Diagana, made this disclosure on Tuesday during his meeting with Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Prof. Nentawe Yilwatda and his team in Abuja
Diagana said the World Bank’s delegation came to Nigeria to assess to the level of progress and challenges of social investment programme and assured the bank’s continued support for the initiative in order to reduce poverty in Nigeria.
While stressing the bank’s support for Nigeria to enable the government to provide quality services through programmes that can help in creating jobs and other benefits, the banker said that the World Bank had “a very large programme here in Nigeria worth more than $17 billion.”
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In his remarks, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, described the World Bank as a dependable partner and maintained that the Ministry would continue to collaborate with relevant agencies, including the United Nations, with a view to ensuring that more funds are provided to reduce poverty in the country.
Speaking on the achievements of the government’s social investment programmes so far, he explained the criteria that any Nigerian must meet to benefit from the conditional cash transfer initiative.
Yilwatda clarified: “Everybody who is going to benefit from this conditional cash transfer will be given a digital identity, so you have digital trust.
“And that is not just identity, but it is a social inclusion and financial inclusion to hundreds and thousands of Nigerians who before now were not socially inclusive. They were not also financially included in Nigeria.
“You know, having over 70 million of Nigerians who before now have no account numbers, have no identity, you cannot trace their homes; you can’t trace their addresses. And today, while you’re taking all their homes, we also give digital identity, and we’re paying them conditional cash transfer.
“This the largest financial inclusion ever the history of Nigeria, and this is a bold step by Mr. President to ensure that the effect of the reforms that the government is doing is also being cushioned by this social investment that we’re having in the country”, the minister added.
According to him, the initiative is “targeting 15 million households. Nigeria has roughly about we have roughly about 41 to 42 million households, the total number of household that we have in the country. So we are targeting 15 million households out of these 42 million households.
“So, if you look at the numbers, it means we are doing roughly about the neighborhood of over 30% of the households that will benefit from this conditional cash transfer.
“Multiply that number by five, we’re taking off roughly about 60 million people will benefit from this conditional cash transfer.
“Now if you look at these numbers, because the numbers are saying that roughly about 42% of Nigerians are living in poverty, those numbers simply shows that roughly about 90 million people, which means this cash transfer alone is targeting almost over 70% but people who are living under poverty in Nigeria by this conditional cash transfer, which is the largest ever in the history”, Yilwatda added.
