The minister, who was a guest on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme on Monday, said some persons want his ministry to bend for political reasons but “unfortunately it’s a partnership between us and the international community – the World Bank is involved, CSOs (civil society organisations) are involved and it’s not just a ministry activity”.
He said, “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.
“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.”
The minister said he suspended cash transfers and that National Identification Number (NIN) and Bank Verification Number (BVN) are now compulsory for all digital transfers for audit and transparency purposes.
“It is going to be clearly digital. This time around, we are carrying the CSOs along so that all payments, we will ask them to verify, they can do follow-ups and we can have some levels of transparency in what we are doing,” he said.
The minister said though 19.8 million poor Nigerians are captured on the nation’s social register to qualify for social safety funds, the government has validated only the identities of 1.2 people.
Yilwatda said, “Currently, we have a social register; we have 19.8 people on the social register but when you have a list, you need to validate that list.
“For now, the people that have been validated are only about 1.2 million people. We need to validate the entire register so that we can get 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 be sure that these people 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 government targets 15 million poor households with N75,000.
The humanitarian ministry has courted controversies since its establishment by former President Muhammadu Buhari.
In October 2024, President Bola Tinubu appointed Yilwatda to replace Betta Edu who was suspended in January 2024 before her removal.
Controversy had enveloped Edu’s alleged involvement in the approval of N585,198,500.00 to be disbursed into a personal account but she denied the allegation and said there were plans to tarnish her image, and that she wouldn’t embezzle government funds.
Incidentally, Edu’s predecessor, Sadiya Farouq, was also probed over an alleged laundering of N37.1 billion under the administration of ex-President Buhari.
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