‘Previous social interventions in Nigeria worsened poverty’

APERA IORWA, is the coordinator, National Social Safety-Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO), which was established to build structures for the implementation of social protection programmes, including the National Social Register. In this interview with MODESTUS ANAESORONYE, he discusses objectives of the agency, what it has achieved since establishment, and challenges faced by previous social protection schemes. Excerpts:

What can you tell us about NASSCO and why it was established?

The Federal Government in 2016 prioritized social protection as a strategy to poverty alleviation, which led them to approach the World Bank. It was in partnership with the World Bank that the Federal Government established the National Safety-nets Programme. So, NASSCO is created primarily to build structures and systems for the implementation of social protection programmes in the country, including the development of the National Social Register. This programme in itself, as the loan or the credit facility is known, created the National Social Safety-nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO) and the National Cash Transfer Office (NCTO).

NASSCO, being the umbrella body that oversees the activities of NCTO, is therefore created primarily to build structures and systems for the implementation of social protection programmes in the country, including the development of the National Social Register.

The second part of NASSCO’s work is to co-ordinate the implementation of the Social Safety-nets Programme at the time that the Federal Government had three social safety nets programmes, all with the support of the World Bank. One is the National Cash Transfer Office. This is the office responsible for N5,000 cash transfer to poor and vulnerable Nigerians every month, but they pay in two-month cycles of N10, 000. The second social safety net programme that is under the supervision of NASSCO is the Youth Employment and Social Support Operations.

The third social safety nets programme that is also under the purview of NASSCO is the Community and Social Development Programme (CSDP). Now, the CSDP is a community-based programme wherein the community will sit to decide among themselves what their needs are and what gaps exist. Once they establish those, then the project comes in to help them provide their needs such as schools, hospitals, roads, electricity, clean water in terms of boreholes. So, these three programmes are under the purview of NASSCO.

The Youth Employment and Social Support Operations loan was tenured and so the loan came to an end in September 2020, but the CSDP and NCTO are still in existence. So, on the one hand we coordinate the national safety nets and on the other we develop social nets including the building of the social register.

Can you give us an overview of the situation in Nigeria with regard to mass poverty?

Nigeria is reported to be host to a sizeable chunk of the world’s extreme poor and vulnerable. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in its “2019 Poverty and Inequality in Nigeria” report, 40 percent of the total population, or almost 83 million people, live below the country’s poverty line of 137,430 naira per year. To put it more graphically, Nigeria now hosts more poor people than some countries with populations almost six times more than hers.

Against this worrisome backdrop and with the potential ugly consequences in mind, President Buhari set a goal of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty over a ten-year period. As a result, the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development was established in August 2019 to strengthen response to complex emergencies and disaster, while providing social protection to poor and vulnerable Nigerians. The mandate of the Ministry, though humanitarian in nature and protective of the rights of the vulnerable, also branches into social development.

Under this mandate, the ministry inherited the National Social Safety Nets Project (NASSP). As a key strategy towards implementing the NASSP, the Government has prioritized social protection interventions for the population.

NASSCO currently has about seven million, six hundred and fifty-three thousand, six hundred and eighty-four (7,653,684) Poor and Vulnerable Households (PVHHs) consisting of thirty-two million, six hundred and eighty-two thousand, one hundred and seventy-one (32,682,171) individuals from 36 states and the FCT. If through the Rapid Response Register, NASSCO is able to add 20 million individuals to the register, as projected in the next few months, in addition to another one million from the Community-Based Targeting (CBT) process, about 53 million out of the 100 million poor and vulnerable Nigerians would have been on the single register, ready for interventions.

How can you evaluate the various Federal Government interventions in ameliorating condition of the populations impacted by poverty, especially in this period of pandemic and economic recession?

Under the coordination and supervision of the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, the Federal Government relied heavily on the Social Investment Programmes (SIPs) to ameliorate the impact of poverty on the population in no small measure. To that effect, the government – using the Home-Grown School Programme – served food rations to homes with school children during the lockdown. The Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) – which is an initiative by the Federal Government to provide financial inclusion and access to micro-credit for Nigerians at the bottom of the economic pyramid and also aims to provide capital to beneficiaries in an easily accessible way to grow their business and on-board these beneficiaries into the formal financial system through bank accounts, mobile wallets, and formal identities – was used in addition to other loan packages to disburse credit to market women, traders, farmers and artisans.

Besides, the CBT process was abridged to aid ramp up numbers in the social register. Also, beneficiaries of the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) were paid in advance to help reduce the impact of the pandemic on the citizens.

Read also: Nigeria economic growth still far from reducing poverty

What gap has NASSCO come to fill and how do you assess your performance in the past five years?

Previous social interventions of government were fraught with poor performance and therefore accentuated poverty instead of reducing it. Such interventions suffered weak coordination, leading to duplication of efforts. More so that there was weak partnership between Federal, States and Local Government on one hand and poor coordination across MDAs & between tiers of government.

Furthermore, social interventions before now lacked appropriate targeting of the poor and vulnerable. As a result, the felt-poor instead of the real poor benefiting from government interventions. As a matter of fact, criteria such as closeness to government and clientism were the targeting mechanisms for selecting beneficiaries. Also, such interventions suffered from weak monitoring and evaluation and also had poor or no Information Management Systems. This led to lack of proper accounting of the impact of such social interventions.

With these challenges in mind, NASSCO was set up to be responsible for the coordination of Social Safety Nets Intervention across the country, as well as the building of a National Social Register (NSR) of Poor and Vulnerable Households (PVHH). Bearing in mind that the NSR is a planning tool, NASSCO has established State Operations and Coordinating Units resident in the State Planning Ministries in the 36 States of the Federation and the FCT.

NASSCO uses three targeting mechanisms which are Geographic, Community Based Targeting (CBT) and Proxy Means Test to generate the PVHHs. The CBT process makes use of Community Based Targeting Teams (CBTT) with offices in 699 Local Governments Areas and still counting. As at 31st March 2021, NASSCO had seven million, six hundred and fifty-three thousand, six hundred and eighty-four Poor and Vulnerable Households (PVHHs) consisting of thirty-two million, six hundred and eighty-two thousand, one hundred and seventy-one individuals from 36 states and the FCT.

The Social Register contains personal data of Poor and Vulnerable Households (PVHHs) including People Living with Disabilities (PWDs), Female Headed Households, Employment Status, Educational Status, Vocation of Household members, Marital Status, the Aged and Youths of no means among others.

You must agree that lack of data and social register has made the various Federal Government interventions very tedious and cumbersome and even difficult to assess. What has changed with the coming of NASSCO?

With the establishment of NASSCO, there has been an improvement in the coordination of Social Safety Nets Intervention across the Country, as well as the building of a National Social Register (NSR) of Poor and Vulnerable Households (PVHH). Also, there are systems in place for effective monitoring and evaluation of social interventions as well as a robust Management Information System (MIS) to track interventions implementation, effect and impact over time.

How is the insecurity in the country affecting the actualization of your mandate?

The current insecurity situation is affecting the actualization of NASSCO’s mandate as high-risk locations are avoided in the implementation of project activities. Besides, internally displaced persons are not captured as project design targets households and not camps of any kind.

However, NASSCO is developing the Unified Register of Beneficiaries which captures IDP camps and host communities that are affected by crises to be included in interventions by organizations that are interested in displaced persons.