President Bola Tinubu’s government has alleged that some politicians are attempting to tamper with the conditional cash transfer register for vulnerable households.

The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Nentawe Yilwatda, claimed in an interview aired on Channels TV on Monday that there were calls to allow state governors to “just” generate the list of beneficiaries.

“Some people want us to bend and allow the governors or the states to just generate the list and send,” Mr Yilwatda stated. “It’s a conditional transfer; conditions are attached to qualifying to benefit from the social safety net.”

Controversies have trailed conditional cash transfer programmes implemented by the previous administration, with many Nigerians accusing the humanitarian ministry of lack of transparency.

However, Mr Yilwatda stressed that the programme is “a partnership between the ministry, international community and several civil society organisations”, insisting the ministry would be transparent in the process.

The minister added, “We will not bend to allowing any political affiliation or attachment to this conditional cash transfer. Poverty doesn’t know the political party, poverty doesn’t know tribe, poverty doesn’t even understand the grammar we are blowing. A poor person is a poor person.”

Stressing that the programme would be entirely digital, Mr Yilwatda said the ministry would thoroughly validate the social register to ensure deserving Nigerians benefit from the programme.

“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,” Mr Yilwatda noted.