N5,000 Stipends: Presidency explains how beneficiaries were selected

The Presidency has declared that it used World Bank data to identify cur­rent beneficiaries of the N5,000 monthly Con­ditional Cash Transfer (CCT) to one million poorest Nigerians even before President Muham­madu Buhari assumed of­fice in May 2015.

According to the Se­nior Special Assistant on Media & Publicity in the Office of the Vice Presi­dent, Mr Laolu Akande, the monthly stipend is being paid to beneficia­ries in nine pilot States of Bauchi, Borno, Cross Rivers, Ekiti, Kwara, Kogi, Niger, Osun and Oyo.

In his press update on the progress of the CCT, which is part of Buhari administration’s Social Investment Programmes (SIP), over the weekend, Akande explained how the Community-Based Targeting (CBT) model of the World Bank was used two years ago to identify most of the beneficiaries in the pilot states, al­though the data collected belongs to Nigeria.

According to Akande, “There is no way anyone can describe the selection of the beneficiaries of the 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 comprises women, men, youths as the community determines.