The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Nentawe Yilwatda, on Monday expressed concern that certain politicians are trying to influence the Cash Transfer Register.

Yilwatda said these politicians are attempting to sway low-income individuals who are included in the social register, aiming to benefit from the government’s conditional cash transfer programme.

According to him, while there are 19.8 million Nigerians registered in the social program, the government has confirmed the identities of only 1.2 million individuals.

“Some people want us to bend and allow the governors or the states to just generate the list and send. It’s a conditional transfer; conditions are attached to qualifying to benefit from the social safety net,” the minister said at a press conference.

“So, we will not bend to allowing any political affiliation or attachment to this conditional cash transfer. Poverty doesn’t know political party, poverty doesn’t know tribe, poverty doesn’t even understand the grammar we are blowing. A poor person is a poor person.”

He said the exercise is going to be clearly digital and, this time around, they will carry the CSOs along so that for all payments, they will ask them to verify and do follow-ups, ensuring some level of transparency in what the ministry is doing.

“Currently, we have a social register; we have 19.8 million people on the social register, but when you have a list, you need to validate that list,” Yilwatda said.

He added that for now, the people who have been validated are only about 1.2 million people.

According to him, the ministry needs to validate the entire register so that they can identify the actual people who are supposed to benefit from it, authenticate their locations, their houses, where they are, and capture on GPS location the location of their homes.

“So that we are sure they exist and are as poor as they claim, because there are social indices for judging poverty, like access to water, access to health, access to education, and access to economic facilities. So that you can now pick the poorest of the poor in the society,” he said.

The Federal Government recently announced that it has concluded plans to restart the direct cash transfer to the poorest and most vulnerable citizens.