NSIP Is changing Lives In Kogi – Onyekehi.
……applauds Buhari, Minister.
The Focal Person of the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) in Kogi State, Hon. Suleiman Onyekehi, has restated that the households lifting programmes was real, impactful and truly eradicating poverty in The state and Nigeria at large.
Onyekehi, who made the assertion in an interview with our Correspondent on Sunday in Lokoja.
He applauded President Mohammadu Buhari, and the Honourable Minister for Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajiya Saadiya Umar Farouq, for the initiative.
Onyekehi also commended His Excellency, Governor Yahaya Bello (GYB) for the maximum support abd strong partnership with Federal Government towards effective implementation of the programs in Kogi state.
Highlighting the summary of the status of implementation of NSIP in Kogi State, Onyekeh said the National Home Grown School Feeding program (NHGSFP), covered about 1800 schools, and 177,000 pupils out of the total of 258,000 had been captured so far.
He added that efforts were on top gear to capture all pupils in public primary schools from class 1-3 as they progress.
He, however, stressed the need to review the N70 school feeding budget per child considering the present high rate of inflations in the country.
According to him, the upward review of the current N70 per child, would improve delivery of programs for results and meeting the aims of the Federal Government.
The focal person further said that the Npower programme’s exited beneficiaries of Batch A and B in kogi state were 12,900 in the first tenure of Mr President.
He said that the batch C stream 1 had just concluded physical verifications and deployment in processs while preparing for the physical verifications of stream 2.
He said that the data for the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) beneficiaries in Kogi for the poor and vulnerable women, had increased to 74,111, saying it was a huge success as more data expected to be allocated from national social register.
Onyekehi stressed that the CCT program was making a huge impacts in the lives of the poor and vulnerable women in the rural communities.
Speaking on the Government Enterprise and Empowerment program (GEEP), he said the first batch was implemented in Kogi between 2017 and 2018 where over 50,000 small traders benefited from tradermoni and marketmoni.
”The GEEP program has been reviewed, restructured and rebooted. Presently, there is an ongoing registration of intending beneficiaries targeting small traders, artisans, power women and rural farmers across the 21 local governments areas of the state.
”The program is in three sub-components (tradermoni, marketmoni and farmermoni) with a zero interest loan between N50,000 to N300,000.
”We shall continue to update the general public as we progress. Kogi State under the leadership of Governor Yahaya Bello is a responsible state with the open governance and transparency.
”NSIP is the most impactful social intervention program any government has ever initiated in this country”, Onyekehi restated.
