Federal Government has disbursed N493billion to about five million households as part of its social protection measures.
Minister of State for Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Yusuf Tanko Sununu, made this known on Thursday in Abuja at a briefing on ‘sustainable response to address the humanitarian gap arising from the partial suspension of World Food Programme (WFP) operations in the Northeast and Northwest’.
Sununu said the ministry has a budget of over N500 billion captured under the service-wide vote for the National and Social Investment Programme.
The fund is expected to be deployed for the implementation of the National Homegrown School Feeding Programme, Conditional Cash Transfer, N-Power training and FarmerMoni, the minister said.
“Already, over five million families, which represent almost 75 million households, have been reached through the rapid response register.
“And over N493 billion has been disbursed,” he explained.
He rationalised how the government arrived at the list of the beneficiaries saying it followed an extensive research from which a report was produced.
“The report says that 65 per cent of vulnerable or poor people are in the northern part of the country, while 35 per cent are in the southern part.
“If you look at the urban-rural ratio, it also goes 70-30 per cent.
“Seventy per cent are in the rural areas, while 30 per cent are in the urban areas.
“So the beneficiaries in the northern part of the country are almost 71 per cent, while in the southern part, it’s 29 per cent.
“This is just reflecting the data that we are working with,” Sununu stated.
