APPENDIX 2

CONDITIONAL CASH TRANSFER SCHEME

AN OVER-VIEW OF EFFORTS TOWARDS ATTAINMENT OF GOAL 1

(HALVING THE PERCENTAGE OF EXTREME POOR AND REDUCTION IN

HUNGER) IN NIGERIA

INTRODUCTION:

Nigeria, which was one of the richest 50 countries in the early 1970s, has retrogressed

to become one of the 25 poorest countries at the threshold of the twenty first century. It

is ironic that Nigeria is the sixth largest exporter of oil and at the same time host the

third largest number of poor people after China and India. Statistics show that the

incidence of poverty using the rate of US $1 per day increased from 28.1 percent in

1980 to 46.3 percent in 1985 and declined to 42.7 percent in 1992 but increased again

to 65.6 percent in 1996. The incidence increased to 69.2 percent in 1997. The 2004

report by the national Planning Commission indicates that poverty has decreased to

54.4 percent. Nigeria fares very poorly in all development indices. According to the

most recent statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics Report on “Nigeria

Poverty Profile 2010”, 60.9 percent of Nigerians in 2010 were living in absolute

poverty as against 54.7 percent in 2004.

The problem of poverty and how to reduce it remains the most pressing challenge in

the international development debate. Poverty is said to be multi-dimensional,

consequent on the fact that it can be as a result lack of Technology, Lack of Education,

Lack of adequate health services, Inability of the growth to provide decent jobs,

inadequate data on the nature, sources and causes of poverty including its intensity and

spread. It can also be attributed to lack of the much needed synergy by the different

arms of Government in addressing poverty.

The above statistics portrays that despite various poverty alleviation initiatives by

successive administrations, the level of social impacts of these initiatives leaves much

to be desired. Over the years, poverty alleviation has been an integral component of

APPENDIX 2

Nigeria’s development plan and specialized agencies were established to promote the

objective of poverty reduction. It is important to highlight that all the 8 MDGs Goals

are primarily geared toward tackling issues of poverty, deprivation and hunger.

The OSSAP-MDGs was set up to assist Nigerians to meet the 8 MDGs Goals.

Contingent upon the multi dimensional nature of poverty there is need to provide

additional investment in Health, Water and Sanitation, Education, Agriculture etc in

other to stem poverty in Nigeria. This led to the creation of the Office of the Senior

Special Assistant to the President on MDG’s. Since its creation, the office had

concentrated its efforts towards the provision additional funding to critical sectors that

could help Nigeria meet the MDGs. There were additional investments in Health,

education, provision of water and sanitation and in the areas of Social Safety Net.

SOCIAL SAFETY NET:

It is in response to this, that federal government through the MDGs introduced a new

innovation in the fight against poverty and the subsequent attainment of Goal 1 that

lead the Federal Government to introduce the Social Safety Net in 2007 with an

appropriation of N10billion. The initiative entails a non-contributory transfer programs

seeking to prevent the poor or those vulnerable to shocks and poverty from falling

below a certain poverty level. Safety net programs can be provided by the public sector

The Social Safety Net Scheme as implemented by the National Poverty Eradication

Programme, (NAPEP) comprises the scaling up of ongoing Schemes for the

empowerment of economically active women, farmers and youths.

The Social Safety Net (SSN) as deployed by the federal government at its inception

encompasses the following:

Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT);

Support for Youth Empowerment through the provision of Keke NAPEP

in 2007;

APPENDIX 2

Support for Micro Credit the in 2007

Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT). The Conditional Cash Transfer entails the provision

of grants to targeted poor households on the condition of investment in human capital

development and it consists of two main components of payment: the Basic Income

Guarantee (BIG) and the Poverty Reduction Accelerator Investment (PRAI).

The implementation of the CCT in the country since its inception in 2007 to date has

witnessed several innovations towards its improvement. The CCT now is been

implemented under the CGS platform. This has brought tremendous increase in states

buy-in and has led to, not only increase in funds available to the programme through

the payment of matching grants by the states, but, has also created greater chance for

the sustenance of the scheme. The scheme is presently encouraging flexibility in the

implementation as opposed to the rigid centrally controlled CCT in order to encourage

states to modify conditionalities to suit their desire to meet the MDGs. a state may

place health, education, nutrition or ante natal care visit for pregnant as its

conditionalities to assess the funds.

OBJECTIVE OF THE CCT:

The objective of the CCT Scheme is to improve the effectiveness of conditional cash

transfer mechanisms to provide adequate incentives for extremely poor families to use

available education and health services for children and pregnant women while

increasing household consumption.

SCALING UP OF CCT FOR ATTAINMENT OF GOAL 1 AND MDGS 2015:

APPENDIX 2

It is imperative to highlight that on inception of CCT in 2007, the scheme was

deployed through NAPEP and was piloted in 12 states. This was subsequently scaled

up to 36 states in 2008. This method centrally coordinated CCT implemtation had its

challenges such as:

Low buy-in by the states and local governments. They viewed the scheme as

a federal intervention which does not need their spport;

Inadequate funding mechanism due to lack of matching grants from state

and local government;

Ownership and Sustainability of the scheme through NAPEP was lacking.

This was what informed the switch in strategies and led to the implementing of CCT

under a more successful intervention, the Conditional Grants Scheme (CGS). In the

2009 3 pilot States of; Jigawa, Cross-River and FCT were selected for the

implementation of the scheme. The successes recorded in this method led to the

scaling-up of the scheme to 10 states in 2011 and under the 2012 round of the

Conditional Grants Scheme to State an impressive 24 states were selected to

implement the CCT with a total of N5billion as the Federal portion of funds to the 24

benefitting state, with a matching grants of N5 billion from implementing states. On

completion of the 2012 round of the CCT under the Conditional Grants Scheme a total

56000 households would have benefitted and this would greatly affect the economic

landscape of the implementing States.

It is important to note that Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on

MDGs is projecting that by 2013 all the 36 states of the federal including FCT would

be benefitting from the Conditional Cash Transfer under the Conditional Grants

Scheme. This mile stone will immensely go-along- way to reduce poverty and social

exclusion currently evident in many parts of the country.

OTHER INTERVENTIONS TO REDUCE POVERTY:

APPENDIX 2

Other germane interventions were also initiated by OSSAP-MDGs to tackle Goal 1

such as:

OSSAP-MDGs collaborating with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture to

Creating value chain for cassava other agricultural produce geared towards

wealth creation and employment generation with budget of N5billion.

In addition, the CCT programme exist strategy is to provide an addition sum

of N100,000 cash grant to each of the participating households. This sum is

expected to be channeled into small scale farming enterprise of each

household. Households will be supported to invest in poultry, fishery,

backyard vegetable production etc in order to add to the Nations food

security, create wealth and reduce hunger.

THE NEW IMPROVED CONDITIONAL CASH TRANSFER (CCT)

Having Spearheaded the introduction of CCT in Nigeria since 2007, and having known

fully our strength and challenges as a nation in its implementation, the Office of the

Senor Special Assistant to the President on MDGs decided to review the process of

CCT implementation in Nigeria to increase its outreach sustainability and to plug-in all

leakages in the pro-poor Social Safety Nets. The following measures were introduced

thus;

State Buy-in:

Hence forth, State and Local Government shall be empowered under our

CGS platform to implement CCT. This is expected to create flexibility the

co-responsibility of the households state can implement CCT on education

or Health.

APPENDIX 2

E-transfer System through Mobile Payment:

The use of paymasters is now abolished. This is to eliminate cases of non-

payment or short payment, delay in payment or short payment report in

some States. Hence forth all payment is to be done through e-mobile

banking services. We are collaborating with EcoBank to make a success

of this e-transfer system. On our part, we have procured 56000 cell-phone

to these to extreme poor 56000 households to make a success of the

programme.

E-registration of Participating Households:

One of the key success area of any CCT is the targeting of beneficiaries in

line with international best practices. Targeting or selection of households

is not complete if the selected household is not enrolled. Over time, we

have discovered that manual registration is fraught with problems of

identification during payment. In order to address this, we introduced e-

registration of participating households using a bio-snap e-registration

mechanism. Through this method, each selected households is now been

registered electronically to ensure that adequate baseline data of each

household is kept for subsequent evaluation.

Poverty Mapping:

It is widely accepted among development partners in Nigeria and beyond

that one of the major challenges facing us as a country and many third

world countries is the absence of or inadequate data for efficient

allocation of scarce resources for development.

Successive governments have attempted to address issues of poverty,

deprivation and hunger with little or no success. Poverty alleviation

efforts were marred by inadequate statistics on the nature, spread, severity

and causes of poverty in each of the local government or ward where the

poverty reside. It is in response to this and our strong desire to channel the

APPENDIX 2

nation resources to where and how it is needed most, that lead MDG’s to

investment Poverty Mapping. This Poverty Mapping is a more drilled

down statistics of poverty in each state, local government and

communities. This Alas of poverty is constantly been used to allocate

MDGs resources in order to obtain maximum impact.

ADVOCACY AND LAUNCH OF CONDITIONAL CASH TRANSFER BY

SSAP-MDGs

The Senior Special Assistant to the President on MDGs in her effort to fast-track the

process towards the attainment of Goal 1, initiated an Advocacy, Sensitization and

Flag-off Visits to the 24 States in the Federal including FCT. This initiative was

germane, contingent upon the slow pace toward halving extreme poverty by 2015.

These visits afforded the SSAP the platform to share experiences on best practices,

flag-off the programme and also motivate the states to fast-track implementation

processes.

SSAP FLAG-OFF CEREMONY OF CONDITIONAL CASH TRANSFER IN

SOKOTO STATE

APPENDIX 2

APPENDIX 2

PAYMENT MADE TO A BENEFICIARY

APPENDIX 2

SUCESSS STORIES

The CCT implementation towards attaining Goal 1 though still gaining momentum,

has been able to prevent over 100,000 basic school aged children from dropping out of

school. The project has also supported the utilization of basic health service

infrastructure in the rural areas by adding a health component to the conditionalities for

children of under-five to access basic health service of immunization, vaccination

before household receive cash transfers.

APPENDIX 2

Indigent beneficiaries especially widows and the aged through Conditional Cash

Transfer programme have been able to realize the dreams of sending their children

back to school, have access to primary health care, paid steepens at the month for the

upkeep of the family for a period of one year and also receive an accumulated savings

investment at the end of the year.

NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS IN 2012:

The 2012 MDGs CCT program is supporting 24 states across the six geopolitical zones

of Nigeria. The criteria for states to be eligible to participate in the operation include:

(i) state ownership and funding of current and related programs; (ii) the level of

poverty using HCDI index; and (iii) geographical spread. The states are: Ebonyi,

Enugu, Anambra, Abia, Akwa-Ibom, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo, Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Ekiti,

FCT, Niger, Plateau, Kwara, Kebbi, Jigawa, Sokoto, Kano, Borno, Bauchi, Yobe, and

Adamawa.

It is also pertinent to highlight that:

APPENDIX 2

A total of 600 (six hundred) communities are benefiting from the

programme (25 communities per state);

A total of 5 billion has extended to states for this program (90% direct

project fund and 10% coordination)

A total of 56, 250, 000 Households is benefiting from the MDGs CCT

Cash transfer in the 24 states across the geopolitical zones;

24 CCT Operational accounts have been opened and the funds, N187,

500, 000.00 needed for the take off of the CCT in the 24 states have been

credited with Eco Bank; and

A CCT database server, containing all beneficiaries’ baseline information

is housed in the MDGs CCT server room. Most of the participating states

have provided their matching grants of N187, 500,000.00.