People & Money

FG Seeks to Use Banks’ and Telcos’ Data for Social Cash Transfers to Urban

The Nigerian government says it is scouring the databases of the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System and the National Communication Commission to harvest data that will enable it identify Nigeria’s most vulnerable urban residents who may qualify for cash transfers.

The National Social Safety Nets Coordinating Office, the initiative’s facilitator, is in the process of compiling a Rapid Response Register to expand enrolment, Finance, Budget and National Planning Minister Zainab Ahmed disclosed at the Open Government Partnership 2020 Virtual Leaders’ Summit Roundtable.

Nigeria, Africa’s biggest nation by population is now home to the highest number of people living in extreme poverty in the world. Northern Nigeria accounts for 87% of the country’s citizens living in poverty, Washington-based World Bank said in February.

Yunusa Abdullahi, the minister’s special assistant on media and communications, in a statement issued in Abuja disclosed the government seeks to enhance openness in its humanitarian response to mitigating the socio-economic effects of the coronavirus crisis. It is hence planning to pay cash transfers directly to beneficiaries’ accounts using their bank verification numbers.

Also Read: Nigeria’s Real Social Cash Transfer: The National Bank of Family & Friends

“Our response to the COVID-19 pandemic under the leadership of Mr. President has been proactive, people-oriented and aimed at averting drastic economic decline and protecting our most vulnerable citizens,” Ms Ahmed said.

Government is also enlarging its safety net initiatives, she added, including school feeding programmes, other cash transfers and is executing a multisector economic sustainability blueprint.

“To this end, in addition to existing OGP measures around budgeting, citizens engagement, open contracting, anti-corruption and others, we have introduced measures to sustainability enhanced fiscal prudence and transparency.

“This includes the establishment of a technology-enabled result-based performance management framework to track expenditures under the Economic Sustainability Plan.”

 

Arbiterz had recommended in a piece on April 1, in the early days of the new coronavirus pandemic, Covidnomics: How to Deliver Food and Money to the Poorest Nigerians, that governments should “give cash rather than food” to the urban poor. We  advised that the government should use “a computer programme” to “identify Nigerians who are likely to be very broke and have no money to buy food by analyzing data on patterns of deposits and withdrawal and balances over the last two years”. We wrote in the piece, “Almost every Nigerian has a mobile telephone. People who spend less than N200 on calls daily are likely to be amongst the most vulnerable. The data harvested from the telcos should be linked to that from the banking system”.

Pictures of the Humanitarian Affairs Minister Sadiya Umar Farouk behind a pile of naira notes distributing cash as “Covid-19 palliatives” met with widespread derision from Nigerians. Critics felt the distribution of cash is prone to abuse. Some also alleged that the recipients of the so-called palliatives were people already on the FGN’s social cash transfer register rather than Nigerians newly made vulnerable by the new coronavirus pandemic. The Federal Government seems to be moving to address these criticisms.

 

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