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$800m loan: World Bank urged to adopt digitally validated addresses, identifications

By Guardian Editor
21 April 2023   |   4:01 am
A leading advocacy organisation in Nigeria, Grassroots Addressing and Identity Management Systems (G-AIMS), has urged the World Bank to make adoption of Addressing and Identity Technology (AIT) a pre-condition for implementation of the newly approved $800 million loan by the World Bank as subsidy palliative for Nigeria

World Bank

How facility will mitigate economic shocks on poor Nigerians, by NASSCO

A leading advocacy organisation in Nigeria, Grassroots Addressing and Identity Management Systems (G-AIMS), has urged the World Bank to make adoption of Addressing and Identity Technology (AIT) a pre-condition for implementation of the newly approved $800 million loan by the World Bank as subsidy palliative for Nigeria.

A letter addressed to the World Bank Country Director in Nigeria, Shubham Chaudhuri, by the Chairman/Founder of Grassroots Addressing and Identity Network Limited (GAIN), Bisi Adegbuyi, says it is imperative that the implementation process be driven by a bespoke AIT to ensure transparency and confidence building.

According to Adegbuyi, “one of the conditions precedents for the process to be transparent is that beneficiaries should be assigned duly validated digital addresses and means of identification. This will also engender a real-time feedback mechanism for transparency and accountability.”

Adegbuyi, a public administrator and a former Postmaster General of Nigeria/CEO of Nigerian Postal Service, noted that one of the major criticisms of Nigeria’s Social Intervention Programme (NSIP), enabled by World Bank’s $500 million International Development Association grant in 2016, was the alleged opaqueness of the National Social Register on poor and vulnerable Nigerians.

“Nigeria’s First Lady, Hajia Aisha Buhari, raised the alarm in May 2019, alleging that NSIP had failed “woefully” because the intervention did not reach the intended beneficiaries.

“There are many other credible criticisms, all deriving from lack of transparency and accountability in implementation of the scheme,” Adegbuyi said.

Alaso, the National Social Safety Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO) said the $800 million facility would help cushion the effects of existing social and economic shocks on the most vulnerable Nigerians.

In a statement, yesterday, Joe Abuku, Head of Communications at NASSCO, clarified that the loan would mitigate the impact of shocks, including COVID-19, inflation, naira redesign cash crunch, flood losses, and petrol subsidy removal.

He said the facility was obtained as part of the National Social Safety Nets Programme (NASSP), which aims to increase government’s response to poor and vulnerable Nigerians facing various types of economic shocks, beginning in 2021.

“The context of the NASSP is to provide a safety net system that allows the government to effectively target and deliver programmes to poor households more efficiently,” he said.

Abuku added that the project is set within “the wider realm of the Nigerian national social protection policy, in which social safety nets are part of the broader social assistance system, as provided by the Constitution of Nigeria, Chapter Two, Sections 16 and 17.”

The spokesperson said the NASSP scale-up is a follow-up project to the NASSP, which was carried out between June 2016 and December 2022.

He added the $800 million World Bank facility for the NASSP scale-up “demonstrates the Federal Government’s commitment to social care, social assistance, and is part of the long-term framework for reducing poverty, rolling back the effects of economic shocks, and improving the living standards of poor Nigerians.”

“It will benefit, at least, 10.2 million poor and vulnerable Nigerian households (in rural and urban poor areas) by way of targeted cash transfers to cushion the effects of existing social and economic shocks (COVID-19, inflation, naira redesign cash crunch, flood losses etc.), including the anticipated petrol subsidy removal,” Abuku said.

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