Sadiya Umar Farouq, Nigeria’s Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, on Thursday said the N5,000 monthly national cash transfer to vulnerable households goes a long way in alleviating poverty.
The minister said this while speaking on the relevance of the initiative to the Federal Government’s plan to pull out 100 million Nigerians from extreme poverty.
“If you look at the people that you are taking this intervention to, N5,000 means a lot to them because these are poor and vulnerable households and it changes their status, but for you and me, N5,000 is not even enough for us to buy recharge card, that’s the difference,” she told State House correspondents.
“But for these poor people in the communities, you have seen, they were able to save out of that N5,000.
“When people say N5000 does not save people, that is an elitist statement, honestly because we’ve had causes to go to the field, and we have seen these people that when you give them this N5,000, they cried and shed tears because they’ve never seen N5,000 in their lives. So, it goes a long way, it changes their status and by that, it lifts them from one stage to another.”
She added that the out-of-school children in the country, are well over 10 million, noting that, there are now 46 million Nigerians on the National social register.
According to her, she believes that the conditional 5,000 naira intervention strategy to the poor and vulnerable Nigerians, has indeed assisted in lifting more Nigerians out of poverty.
