NEC decides on palliatives, jettison Buhari’s national social register over integrity

The National Economic Council (NEC) on Thursday resolved to jettison the national social register used by the Muhammadu Buhari administration to implement its own conditional cash transfer.

Rising from its meeting at the presidential villa, Abuja, the council revealed that the register is replete with integrity issues, adding that the criteria for its compilation were unclear.

Addressing newsmen, Governor Charles Soludo of Anambra State said contrary to what the previous administration projected, it is not possible to digitally transfer money to the poorest of the poor, the majority of whom are unbankable.

Joined by his Bauchi and Ogun States counterparts, Bala Mohammed and Dapo Abiodun, respectively, Soludo noted that beneficiaries of the supposedly transferred cash could not be identified in the villages.

He said NEC resolved that the states would now come up with their own registers using formal and informal means to develop it, assuring that all beneficiaries at the subnational level could easily be accessed that way.

“We need to face the problem of the fact that we don’t have a credible register,” he said.

Soludo further revealed that NEC deliberated on ways to cushion the impact of the recent petroleum subsidy removal.