How we determined beneficiaries of N5,000 stipend, by presidency

The Presidency has disclosed how the authorities determined the beneficiaries of the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) currently receiving the N5000 monthly stipends across the nine pilot states.

According to the Senior Special Assistant on Media & Publicity in the Office of the Vice President, Mr. Laolu Akande, the nine states are Bauchi, Borno, Cross Rivers, Ekiti, Kwara, Kogi, Niger, Osun and Oyo.

Akande further clarified that the reference to Ogun, instead of Osun-among the pilot states in his previous statement on the issue was an error.

In a press update on the progress of the Buhari administration’s Social Investment Programmes, (SIP), over the weekend, Akande explained how the Community-Based Targeting, (CBT) model of the World Bank was used two years ago to identify most of the beneficiaries in the pilot states, as the World Bank is also an active agent in the entire process.

He, however, added that the data collected belongs to Nigeria.

According to Akande, “ there is no way anyone can describe the selection of the beneficiaries of the CCT as partisan as the beneficiaries from eight of the nine pilot states were picked even before this administration came into office.

“First, the officials at federal level, working with the state officials, identify the poorest local government areas, using an existing poverty map for the state, then the local government officials identified the poorest communities in the LGAs and we send our teams there.

‘’The first thing the team does after selection of the LGAs is to select members of the NOA, the LGA and community officials to form the CBT team.

“Then we train the selected officials on how to conduct focus group discussions at community level. These focus groups comprise of women, men, youth, as the community determines.

“After training them, the CBT teams now go to each of their communities to sensitize the leaders, including traditional rulers, on the CBT process and the necessity for objectivity and openness in the process.

“The CBT teams will then engage each group (men, women and youth) in the conversation around the criteria and parameters for determining the poorest people.

The groups would then be encouraged to identify those households that fall within the criteria that the community itself determines, and told that the information is required for government’s planning purposes.

“The CBT team would then compile the criteria and parameters and ask each group to return to their break-out sessions and now begin to identify the households in the community that have been identified as fitting the criteria and parameters.”