National Cash Transfer Office targets 10m vulnerable households

The National Cash Transfer Office (NCTO) has said that its scale up programme would target 10.2million Nigerians to address `economic shock.’

The Interim Head of NCTO, Dr Ibraheem Adam said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria on Friday in Abuja.

Adam said that the scale up programme of the Office would contribute to human capital that would help to grow the country’s economy, especially at the grassroot.

According to him, by the time all these beats come together, we are hoping that people would be removed out of poverty in a considerable number and contribute to the economy of the country.

“This first aspect of the programme which is the cash transfer will end on Dec 31, 2022, but there is a scale up programme that is going to address the issue of economic shock.

“We have 10.2 million beneficiaries on that designed programme that will benefit N5,000 every month; immediately we finish the conditional cash transfer, that will pick up as a scale up programme.

“It will be implemented in all the 36 states in Nigeria and FCT. There is a need to bring this in the face of insecurity and other reasons, and these 10.2 million beneficiaries are also going to have bank account.

“This is going to add to the efforts of government to include people financially in the system, the initial was 2 million and now we are going to do 10.2 million beneficiaries that are going to be added into the financial system which is a good feat,” he said.

He said that financial inclusion would help to remove people from the periphery of the society while bringing then to the centre and give them confidence and social inclusion to become productive.

He added that this would make citizens confidence of what they could achieve and as well as being useful to themselves.

“A loan was collected from the World Bank to give to Nigerians, not to eat but to encourage beneficiaries to come out of poverty, to be productive and establish a sustainable means of livelihood.

“So, if this is sustained, we can say that the aspiration of the president to take 100 million Nigerians out of poverty will be achieved,” he said.