The National Social Protection Forum (NSPF) has asked the National Economic Council (NEC) to reconsider its stand on the National Social Register (NSR) because “it was developed in line with global best practices.”

On July 21, the NEC directed state governments to develop a comprehensive social register for vulnerable people to benefit from the planned palliatives following fuel subsidy removal.

According to NEC, the directive is on the ground that the current NSR lacks credibility, with most of the poor and vulnerable in the register having no bank accounts.

President Bola Tinubu is engaging banks to disburse cash to impoverished Nigerians, forgoing the register used by ex-President Muhammadu Buhari in selecting beneficiaries of a N5000 monthly stipend, many of whom cannot be traced. 

However, in a statement signed by its national coordinator, Taiwo Benson, in Abuja on Monday, the forum described the development as “very unfortunate,” considering the huge resources that went into developing the register.

According to the forum, the register is highly credible considering its bottom-up approach, with active community participation in defining and identifying the poor and vulnerable households among them.

“We wish to state categorically that the register was developed and compiled using transparent and participatory processes,” noted the statement. “The development process, which was community-based, involved multi-sectoral stakeholders, led by local and state government officials across the 36 states and the FCT, in line with global best practices.”

The NSPF, a group of civil society organisations and media working on the social protection space, explained that the register was developed through a community-based targeting approach.

They said the approach, supported by the World Bank, involved the community defining what poverty and vulnerability mean to them and, based on that definition, identifying the poor and vulnerable among them.

The identified poor and vulnerable households were then enumerated and captured using a digital platform.

“The final stage is the Proxy Means Test, where data is gathered by the enumerators and used to create a proxy of incomes and needs of the households. The households were then ranked into deciles of the poorest and the most vulnerable in each community,” the group explained. “The NSR, therefore, is a repository of poor and vulnerable households, aggregated from the states’ social registers.”

The group also mentioned that rather than jettison the NSR or the SSR, the federal and state governments should take time to understand the development process and address identified gaps to improve quality, stressing that there is no perfect social register anywhere in the world.

“What is required is a document flexible enough to accommodate emerging trends and needs. It could be subjected to periodic reviews and updates,” it reiterated.

The forum said the register, as of June 30, consisted of 15.73 million households made up of 62.82 million individuals covering 177,421 communities in 8,000 electoral wards from 764 LGAs. They added that nine million individuals from four million poor and vulnerable households in the register have bank accounts as part of continued efforts to ensure financial inclusion.

(NAN)