In consideration of the prevailing economic hardship, the Federal Government has announced plans to distribute N75,000 cash to about 70 million ‘poorest of the poor’ Nigerians by 2025.
The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Prof Nentawe Yilwatda disclosed this during his appearance on The Morning Show on Arise Television on Wednesday.
According to Yilwatda, the ministry aims to deploy the programme across 36 states of the Federation by the end of January 2025, targeting the registration of up to 18.1 million Nigerian households through the National Identity Number (NIN) system.
“We want to deploy by the end of January across 36 states to ensure we start harvesting the NIN number of up to 18.1 million Nigerian households that we need to capture as fast as possible so that we can make payment for them,” the minister said.
“The target of the President is that we should target 15 million households. And an average household is about 4 to 5. We are discussing here roughly about 70 million households with about N75,000 per person this year,” the minister noted.
However, a wide percentage of Nigerians are curious about the criteria the government will use to determine the status of the people.
Also, many believe that politics will eventually come into play, with party loyalists, cronies, and government officials’ relatives benefitting ahead of the poor people the money is originally intended for.
Whichever way it goes, the people will see, as the take-off of the programme is just a few days away.
