Pascal Oparada
Statistics from the National Cash Transfer Office (NACTO) show that the federal government has given cash to about 1,126,211 households.
The record, which was released by NACTO to the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR), shows that the northern States are the highest beneficiaries of the scheme.
The states are Katsina 133,227, Zamfara, 130,764, Jigawa 99,044, Kano 84,148 and Plateau 78,430 households
Others are North Central- 321,434, North East- 109,442, South South- 67,696, South West- 37,904, and South East- 27,977 households.
The Federal Government allocated about N500 billion to the scheme in the 2016 budget for the implementation of its welfare scheme.
The same amount was budgeted for social programmes in 2017.
As it stands now, over two million households have been captured in the in the scheme.
Following criticisms from the public on how the Federal Government was able to compile the list of the most vulnerable Nigerians who get the N20,000 cash transfer to cushion the economic effect of the coronavirus disease, President Muhammadu Buhari had directed that N20,000 be paid to each vulnerable household through the social investment scheme to cushion the economic impact of the lockdown arising from the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, the ICIR reports.
In a phone interview with Joe Abuku, spokesperson of NASSCO to ascertain the data, he said, “plus or minus, the figure of those benefiting from the CCT will be around 1.1 million”
Nigerians have complained that the federal government is showing favouritism in the Conditional Cash Transfer initiative.