Out of the $800 million authorised for the National Social Safety-Net Program Scale Up, the World Bank has upped its payment to Nigeria from roughly $300 million to $315 million.
This indicates that within a month of the preceding payment, almost $15 million was made available to Nigeria.
A $428.31 million outstanding amount prevents around 42% of the loan from being fully distributed, according to the project’s Implementation Status & Results Report.
Out of the $800 million, roughly $600 million will go toward Economic Shock Responsive Cash Transfer (ESR-CT), $147 million toward Extended Regular Cash Transfer (ER-CT) for the impoverished and vulnerable, and $53 million toward project management and delivery system strengthening, according to a document obtained from the World Bank.
The letter also revealed that by mid-December, the Federal Government aimed to reach around five million people.
But barely 1.5 million of the project’s total target of 15 million households—or roughly 0.1% of them—have gotten cash transfers.
Also, the initial project goal was to release N5,000 monthly to poor and vulnerable Nigerians but the Federal Government wrote to the World Bank to modify this goal and increase the cash to N25,000 monthly over three months.
The document read: “The Federal Ministry of Finance has approved the commencement of disbursements and project implementation. Since then, the project has made an initial drawdown of USD 315 million, and commenced initial cash transfers to poor and vulnerable households, with about 1.5 million households already receiving transfers in their accounts. The task team is supporting the project to continuously expand cash transfers to households, with a target of reaching at least 5 million beneficiaries by mid-December.
“The Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation has communicated the government’s decision to change the program parameters focused on the economic shock response. The decision is now to cover 15 million households with cash transfers of N25,000 over 3 months.”
Additionally, it was revealed that the units carrying out the project are collaborating with the National Identity Management (NIMC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to effectively enrol beneficiaries and issue a Bank Verification Number (BVN) or National Identity Number (NIN) for account operations.
Prior to this, the CBN declared that, as of April 2024, all bank accounts lacking a BVN and NIN will be set to “Post no Debit.” Additionally, according to the apex bank, by January 31, 2024, all BVNs and/or NINs connected to, associated with, or tied to accounts or wallets must undergo electronic revalidation.
