As criticisms trail the disbursement of money to the vulnerable in the federal government’s Conditional Cash Transfer scheme, the minister of humanitarian affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Farouq, has said no region or section Nigeria will be excluded.
Farouq said on Thursday, April 2, 20202, that the program was a national one with beneficiaries cutting across different religious and political inclinations hence people must desist from spreading unfounded rumors about it.
“This is a national program irrespective of religion or political affiliation,” the minister said at a briefing held by the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19.
“It is a program that has been on and nobody is going to be shortchanged. Let us be nationalistic in this very trying moment of our lives.
We are all committed to this work and I appeal that everyone should contribute his or her quota to get through this pandemic,” Ms. Farouq added.
To this end, she said: “I want to appeal to citizens to desist from spreading fake and malicious news around.”
” We just started the program of the cash transfer and we have different states with their numbers all over the country. No section of this country is going to be marginalized,” she explained. Farouq spoke further: “It is a program that has been on for years and the national social register as on 31st March 2020 is made up of 11,045,537 poor and vulnerable people in 35 states and 453 local government areas across the country.
“Currently, the beneficiaries that we give this cash transfer to are 2.6 million people. In FCT, we have 5,982 households, in Nasarawa we have 8,271 households, Katsina has 6,723 households and, Anambra has 1,857 households.
“Household’s composition by the general standard is six-person per household. We are thinking of expanding the register and we are in touch with the UN Social Protection Donor group to see how the register can be largely expanded to cover additional 1 million households but we have 11.4 million households already for this intervention”.
Forget Cash Payouts, Nigerians Stranded Abroad To Come Home
Nigeria’s ministry of foreign affairs has directed all its missions abroad to compile lists of Nigerians who feel stranded abroad and would like to come home.
Abike Dabiri-Erewa, the chairperson of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, disclosed that this was a sequel to requests by Nigerians stranded abroad in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
She, however, said that the MFA had instructed that “the financial implications will be borne by the prospective evacuees, who will be compulsorily quarantined when they returned”.
According to a press statement on Friday, April 3, 2020, by the head, media and public relations unit, NIDCOM, Abdur-Rahman Balogun, interested citizens should inform the embassy in their country of residence about their intention to return to Nigeria.
It said, “The interested Nigerians are advised to inform the missions in the various countries they are in, which will then collate and coordinate with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“To this end, Abike Dabiri-Erewa urged Nigerians stranded abroad willing to return home to key into this Federal Government gesture by providing information to the mission in their respective host countries.”
