A coalition of civil society organisations, the National Society Protection Forum (NSPF) has told Nigerian governors to improve on the National Social Register (NSR) to serve in the best interest of Nigerians rather than calling for its outright rejection.
Recall that the last National Economic Council meeting (NEC) suggested that the National Social Register (NSR) is a top-down database from the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari and lacks credibility.
Reacting to the development in a press statement issued by the National Coordinator, Dr Taiwo Benson, on Monday, NSPF said, “It is a flexible register that needs to be improved upon and is open to accommodate new challenges, like all databases, but the NSR surely will have room for improvement, including the need for regular reviews and updates.”
NSPF stated that several global organisations and private entities have used the register, which has over 15 million households in it, thus should be maintained.
It said, “Several international agencies including the World Food Programme, United Nations Development Programme, UNWomen and UNICEF have used the register for several state-level interventions. Also, private organisations like Tony Elumelu Foundations are making use of the register for their interventions..”
NSPF said, “There are 15,730,004 households in the NSR as of 30th June 2023; this consists of 62,819,214 individuals in over 8,000 Federal electoral wards, 764 LGAs and almost 177,421 communities across all the States of the Federation and the FCT.
“It is important to mention that 4 million PVHHs and 9 million individuals on the NSR have bank accounts while electronic wallets are operated for some households to enable to them receive cash transfers from various programmes that have adopted the NSR for various reasons.
“It is instructive to mention that the NSR has been applauded internationally because of the integrity and credibility of the data; several countries have visited Nigeria to study the development process of the register yet what has obtained international recognition has been castigated by state governors for reasons still not so clear.”
Speaking about the credibility of the register as raised by the NEC, the Forum said, “To underscore the integrity and credibility of the national social register enjoys, several of the states and development partners have also been using the registries for different state-sponsored schemes and local initiatives to reduce poverty among poor and vulnerable households. National Cash Transfer Program: is a federal government initiative which involves giving a bi-monthly cash transfer of 10,000 naira per PVHHS (5000 naira per month per PVHHs) currently paying about 2,000,000 households mined from the social register.
“Additionally, the FG Covid-19 Rapid Response Register (RRR) Cash Transfer: is an instituted 6-month Federal Government Cash Transfer of 30,000 naira only to one million PVHHs in Nigeria. The data was mined from the Rapid Response Register (RRR).
“National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) uses the social register for its beneficiaries (mining at SOCU Level) for the State Contributory Health Management Schemes to meet the obligations of the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF), which targets informal workers.”
It further said, “Political leaders at all levels should recognize that governance is a continuum; it is improper to cast doubt on the decisions or development processes undertaken by a predecessor. Power is transient and should be utilized for the national interest.
“Rather than jettison the NSR/SSR, state governments need to interrogate the development process from their state officials to understand the development process and where there are gaps to improve upon it.
“It is our studied opinion that there is no perfect social register anywhere in the world. However, the NSR is authentic, methodologically developed, and enjoys a high level of credibility as it is developed with the combined efforts of community members.
“LGA and State Governments staff. It is a flexible register that needs to be improved upon and is open to accommodate new challenges, like all databases, the NSR surely will have room for improvement, including the need for regular reviews and updates. But to jettison the NSR because of the need to control the cash transfer by State Governors is gravely unfair to the process that led to the NSR and the stakeholders that put it together.”
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