The Honourable Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq has flagged off the distribution of engagement letters and monitoring devices to trained Independent Monitors in Calabar, Cross River State at Ministry of Finance, Hope Waddel Conference Hall Government House, Calabar, on the 3rd of July, 2021.
The Honorable Minister who was represented at the flag off by the Director, Human Resources Management (HRM) of the Ministry, Babatunde Jaji, disclosed that the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), created by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2016 is mandated to lift citizens out of poverty through its various programmes such as N-Power, National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP), the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) and Government Enterprise Empowerment Programme (GEEP).
The Programme is implemented in the 36 states including the Federal Capital Territory.
Continuing, Babatunde said, the 46 Independent Monitors in Calabar are among the 5000 that were to be trained across the 36 States including FCT. However only 4,452 were successful trained nationwide.
“The devices to be used in monitoring the Programme are locally made in Nigeria with an Application called the Social Investment Management Information System (SIMIS) designed by an indigenous company. Using this Application the Ministry sees real time activities of the Independent Monitors on the field, see reports submitted and the NSIP performance indicator state by state. This will help the Ministry detect areas where there are challenges and essentially help the Ministry to deliver on the mandate, to to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty” he said.
The Independent Monitors are expected to monitor a designated number of beneficiaries of the NSIP to ensure they achieve the desired result. However, the Ministry has methodically review the modalities and design previous engagements to build a robust and proactive strategies to monitor the programmes. The engagement letters articulated the scope of work for the monitors which include ; routine monitoring of NSIP in their assigned L.G.A and provision of evidence based reports on findings amongst other things.
The Director HRM urged the monitors not to assign their responsibility to third parties, each monitor will be held accountable by the Ministry in the event of any misconduct.
He congratulated them and urged them to carry out the assignment with a sense of patriotism, diligence and sincerity, ensuring a more equitable distribution of resources to the vulnerable populace inclusive children , vulnerable youths and women.
Earlier, the Representative of the Focal Person of the NSIp in Calabar, Barrister Silvanus Iyang said the gathering is to put finishing touches to the effort of the Federal Government in respect to training IMs, to equip, strengthen them for better performance to achieve the desired objective of the NSIP Programme, in line with the vision of President Muhammadu Buhari in lifting citizens out of poverty.
The Programme Manager of NHGSFP, Gabriel Okulaja told the IMs to take the assignment seriously because the sustainability of it depend on the Team’s ability to deliver on the mandate. He lauded the Ministry for its continued support in lifting Nigerians above the poverty line and improving on the living standards of the citizenry. He told the IMs to make good use of the opportunity given to them to attain greater height.
Nneka Anebeze
SA Media to Honourable Minister of Humanitarian Affairs.
July 3, 2021
