Sadiya disburses N160m to 8,000 Lagos rural women

 

Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajia Sadiya Faruk, disbursed, at the weekend, N160million to 8, 000 rural women of Lagos State.

The Lagos edition is part of the Nationwide Grant for Rural Women Project.

Grant for Rural Women Project was introduced in 2020 to sustain the social inclusion agenda of President Buhari’s Administration.

Sadiya said the programme is consistent with the President’s national vision of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years.

It is designed to provide a one-off grant to some of the poorest and most vulnerable women in rural and peri-urban areas of the country.

The minister was represented at the occasion by the ministry’s permanent secretary, Mallam Bashir Nura Alkali.

The grant, Sadiya explained, was the Federal Government’s gesture and support towards alleviating the trauma caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to her, the social investment programme was introduced 2016 and it has impacted positively on the lives of the poor and vulnerable in Nigeria as over 12 million households have benefitted from NSIP interventions in the last five years. This included payment of monthly Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) of N5, 000 to one million indigent Nigerians to protect them against economic shocks and elevate them out of poverty.

Also, 1,092,405 micro and small business owners accessed loans to boost productivity, increase income and reduce poverty under the Government Enterprise Enhancement Programme (GEEP).

The N-Power programme provided temporary income-generating opportunities for 500, 000 unemployed youths while 8,612,457 primary 1-3 pupils in public schools currently are receiving one meal per day under the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme.

“It is in view of this, that President Muhammadu Buhari graciously approved the expansion of the programme to touch more lives and lift more Nigerians above the poverty breadline”, the minister said.

The grant, Sadiya stressed, among many other programmes in the ministry, is being restructured and revamped to respond to peculiarities of different parts of the country, to ensure the right beneficiaries are targeted, and to enhance impact on target beneficiaries.

“We are working tirelessly to address some of the socioeconomic problems that are bedeviling all parts of the country by strengthening the humanitarian-development-peace nexus”, Sadiya stated.

“A cash grant of N20,000 each will be disbursed to about 125,000 poor women across the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory.

Our target in Lagos State is to disburse the grant to over 8, 000 beneficiaries across the all Local Government Councils. The grant is expected to increase income and productive assets of target beneficiaries.

“It is our hope that the beneficiaries of this programme will make good use of the grant to generally contribute towards improving their living standard.

“We believe that with the complementary effort of Lagos State government, the target beneficiaries will be adequately covered within the next few days.