The Presidency sunday said that it used
the World Bank’s Community Based Targeting (CBT) model, established two
years ago, to select the beneficiaries of its N5000 monthly stipends to
the poorest Nigerians.
The Senior Special Assistant to the Vice
President on Media and Publicity, Mr Laolu Akande, in a statement in
Abuja said the CBT model of the World Bank had been used two years ago
to identify most of the beneficiaries in the pilot states.
He said the World Bank was also an
active agent in the selection process, explaining, however, that the
data collected belonged to Nigeria.
Akande gave the names of the nine pilot
states where the programme had started as Bauchi, Borno, Cross Rivers,
Ekiti, Kwara, Kogi, Niger, Osun and Oyo and clarified that reference to
Ogun, instead of Osun-among the pilot states- in his last press
statement on the issue was an error.
He explained that in eight of the nine
pilot states, the selection process had taken place at least two years
ago under a programme supported by the World Bank in an agreement
entered into directly with the state governments.
He said the ninth state, Borno, was added because of the situation of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).
According to him, the process of selecting beneficiaries is fair and transparent and without mischief.
He said: “There is no way you can
describe this process as partisan. The president is president of the
entire country and the Social Intervention Programmes are for all
Nigerians as the case may be.”
In addition to the nine pilot States,
and with the release of funds for the programmes, the CBT model has now
commenced in other states.
He said: “There is no way anyone can
describe the selection of the beneficiaries of the Conditional Cash
Transfer (CCT) as partisan as the beneficiaries from eight of the nine
pilot states were picked even before this administration came into
office.
“First, the officials at federal level,
working with the state officials, identify the poorest Local Government
Areas, using an existing poverty map for the state, then the LG
officials identify the poorest communities in the LGAs and we send our
teams there.
“The first thing our team does after
selection of the LGAs is to select members of the NOA, the LGA and
community officials to form the CBT team. Then we train the selected
officials on how to conduct focus group discussions at community level.
These focus groups comprise of women, men, youths, as the community
determines.
“After training them, the CBT teams now
go to each of their communities to sensitize the leaders, including
traditional rulers, on the CBT process and the necessity for objectivity
and openness in the process. At that meeting, they firm up a date to
convene a community meeting at a designated location within the
community.
“On the set date, discussions are held
in the local languages, using terminologies that resonate in that
community. The CBT team will explain to the community the purpose of the
gathering, i.e. to determine the parameters of poverty upon which
persons can be described as poor and vulnerable within the context of
that community.”
He said the CBT teams would then engage
each group (men, women and youths) in the conversation around the
criteria and parameters for determining the poorest people.
He explained further that the groups
would then be encouraged to identify those households that fell within
the criteria that the community itself determined, and told that the
information was required for government’s planning purposes.
He said various poverty criteria had
been thrown up so far, explaining that in some cases, people had said it
was the number of times they ate, the number of times the fumes of
firewood went up from the house, the size of farmland or type of crops
grown.
After the discussions, Akande said the groups would resume in plenary and report back the criteria and parameters discussed.
The CBT team, according to him, would
then compile the criteria and parameters and ask each group to return to
their break-out sessions and begin to identify the households in the
community that had been identified as fitting the criteria and
parameters.
“Once that is done at the groups,
everybody comes together again with names compiled by each group. Now,
when the same name is featured in at least two of the three groups, it
is deemed qualified to be listed on the Social Register,” he added.
He said that at that stage, bank
accounts were opened for each of the caregivers by capturing the
biometric data of households identified as among the poorest and
vulnerable.
He said states had been updated on the
requirements for the engagement by the federal team, adding that once
the lists from sates were enumerated, their details were uploaded onto a
server at the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System, NIBSS, which hosts
the electronic platform that validates all the payments of the FG for
the SIPs.
He said banks had been informed that
payments must be at community level, so those banks engaged for the
pilot stage had in turn engaged several payment agents, to ensure
cash-out to the beneficiaries in their places of residence.
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