Kabir Abdullahi, the National Coordinator of the National Social Safety Net Coordinating Office, has said that the primary intended objective of the national social register was to support individuals not to fall into the pit of poverty and create a ladder for those already in the pit of poverty to climb out. The register “is an outcome of tools to identify poor and vulnerable households and their socioeconomic profile,” he said.
He further explained that about 138 data features must be fulfilled for one to be registered in the National Social Register, and this is done at the state level and is established under the Department of Budget and Planning, which includes the local government in its processes.
In an interview with ARISE NEWS on Monday, Abdullahi, while speaking on the state governors being sceptical about the credibility of the National Social Register, said that it is fair to a new administration to want to test the integrity of the register so that they can trust and also utilize it.
Abdullahi further said that The governor of Kaduna, Uba Sani, is only afraid of trusting the registers because he is new in office and would want to understand the parameters within which the register operates. but the last administration had directed all social developments to be implemented using the national social register.
He said More money will not be needed to test the integrity of the register; “it will be a random sampling across communities and households; there will be a budget for that of only a few hundred, but it is necessary.”
Kabir Abdullahi said that because of the insurgency in some states like Borno, some people in certain conditions could not be captured for the National Social Register, but those in safe locations were captured, but the National Living Standard Survey does not have any registration of anyone in Borno on its database.
In conclusion, he spoke on audits for the Social Register cash transfer, saying there have been no cases of money missing. Still, they have had to commission an audit to identify individuals that were missing from the register. When the audit report came back, they were able to identify the individuals missing.
Catherine Amaga
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