Social security: Presidency develops mechanism to address complaints

Ali Ademola, acting national coordinator, National Social Safety Nets Coordinating Office, said the federal government had developed a Communication Manual, to address grievances in the implementation of the programme.

The office, under the Office of the Vice President, coordinates all Social Safety-Net Programme, NASSP, in the country, including registering of the poor and vulnerable and Conditional Cash Transfer Scheme.

Mr Ademola disclosed this in an interview with newsmen in Abuja at a one day stakeholders’ meeting for the adoption of NASSP Project Implementation Manual, PIM.

Mr Ademola said the office had designed the Grievance Redress mechanism to ensure effective implementation of the scheme in the rural communities.

“One person in each community is a Grievance Redress person, who will explain to us at all times if anybody has a problem in getting his or her benefits.

“We also have a mechanism called validation exercise so that officials from the federal office will go to states and see how many people have been taken,” he added.

He said NASSP had been coordinating the activities of registering the beneficiaries and the Cash Condition Transfer Scheme.

The Conditional Cash Transfer targets is one of the six Social Protection Programmes of the Federal Government which one million extremely poor and vulnerable households will receive N5,000 monthly yearly.

The coordinator, however, confirmed that only 300,000 households had benefited so far from the programme.

He said the programme was World Bank Assisted Programme, adding that procedure for registering the beneficiaries was tedious.

“The Federal Government has entered into credit agreement with the World Bank for a five-year programme.

“The community-based targeting system is World Bank driven and the bank credit has not fully taken off.

“The World Bank at every point in time must give you a no objection for you to go ahead. If you have not finished one stage, you cannot go to the other.

“Also, not all the states have keyed into the programme; some states are still at the elementary stage.

“There are some states that are not even part of it yet. We are going into five new states,” he said.

According to him, 29 states are currently participating in the programme.

Mr Ademola said the stakeholders had already adopted the PIM – Project Implementation Manual.

He said the PIM contained the organisational structure, powers of approval, the states and the Federal Government and other vital issues in the implementation process, so that when we have a guide, everybody knows his role.

“The intention of the meeting was to bring all the states to agree on the new implementation manual for easy and fast implementation of the programme.

“This is not a Federal Government affair alone; this is everybody coming together to take a decision whereas the Federal Government pays the bills.

“The beneficiaries reside in the different states of the federation; the joy is that we are able to come together and stand on how best to serve our people.

“We need to do more to move Nigeria forward,” Mr Ademola said.

He said the meeting also achieved the role of sensitising the stakeholders to the implementation of the scheme.

“The meeting is also used to address the issue of conflicts among leaders and strictly define roles of every stakeholder in the implementation of the programme.”

NAN