Mrs Maryam Uwais, Special Adviser to the President on Social Protection, says about 67 per cent of Nigerian population live below poverty line.
Uwais said this during a social protection Practitioners and Academics Dialogue on Thursday in Abuja.
According to her, some of the social issues that plaque Nigeria is high poverty, high unemployment rates, increased insecurity, gender inequality and poor literacy rates, among others.
She added that social protection was a response and a key strategy towards reducing poverty and socio-economic vulnerabilities in the population as well as to encourage G2p payments digitalisation and financial inclusion.
Uwais also said that the Federal Government has designed a four-point National Social Investment Programme (N-SIP), including Conditional Cash Transfer Programme (CCT).
“This involves the direct transfer of N5,000 to the targeted poor and vulnerable households.
“The Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) assist vulnerable families, feed their classes, primary 1-3 school children one nutritious meal a day and provides an incentive to send them to school which is targeted to feed 5.5 million children.
“The N-Power Programme is designed to put 500,000 young Nigerian graduates on employment and empower or train 100,000 of non-graduates with necessary tools to create, develop and build projects that will change our communities, economy and nation.
“There is also Government Enterprise Empowerment Programme (GEEP), which is targeted financial inclusion and empowerment loans programme to deliver maximum impact to the economically under- represented groups that targets about 1.6 million beneficiaries,’’ said the presidential aide.
She said that for National Social Programme to move forward the cooperation of stakeholders was key in actualising it in terms of knowledge, resources and skills for transformative undertaking.
Uwais called on stakeholders to partner with the initiative, saying that the complex issues facing Nigeria would be met with comprehensive solutions by collective efforts to invest in the strongest and most promising sector.
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