The federal government says its National Social Investment Programme is aimed at bridging the gap between the poor and the rich in the country.
The National Coordinator of the National Social Investment programme, Dr Umar Bindir said this while appearing on a live interactive programme on Rhythm 93.7fm in Port Harcourt known as Talk of the Town.
Dr Bindir said the scheme was deliberately conceived by President Muhammadu Buhari to give hope to vulnerable Nigerians.
“In terms of the methodology to target the vulnerable and the poor to advance the conditional cash transfer, we have now commenced the process of putting up a national social register. This is a process of registering poor people all over Nigeria, community by community, ward by ward, local government by local government up to the state level and federal. This is a methodology deployed in many countries and it has worked, Nigeria is not left behind. What is this social register, its captures by NIN the household that is poor”.
The National Coordinator of the Social Investment programme, Dr Bindir said the scheme particularly the cash transfer and feeding has been a success in Rivers state.
He asked Rivers people who are in doubt with its programmes to engage its focal person in the state, Allwell Ihunda, for more explanation.
“The structure of the National Social Investment Programme is that you must have a state coordinator who is a son of the soil. Now, this is the person who is coordinating all these flagships. So in Rivers state, as far as the National homegrown school feeding programme in the twenty three local government areas we are targeting eight hundred and two schools and we have eighty five thousand nine hundred and eight children who are actually benefitting in Rivers who are been fed and these children the cooks that are cooking for them are thousand and ninety seven in Rivers.”
A beneficiary of the programme in Rivers state, Aniekan Nse Essien lauded the federal government for the initiative.
Aniekan Nse Essien, a benefactor of the NPOWER programme from batch A said she was paid thirty thousand per month throughout the duration of the programme.
She appealed to the federal government to extend the time frame of the programme in order to food on the table of more vulnerable people in Rivers state.
Meanwhile, the NSIP has advised applicants who registered for the N-Power Batch C programme, to visit the NASIMS platform to update their profiles and take the online test precedent to being considered for on-boarding.
It will be recalled that whereas 500,000 persons were initially slated for on-boarding, President Muhammadu Buhari increased the figure to one million, to fast-track his vision of taking 100 million Nigerians out of poverty.
