The National Social Register database, which has over 48 million persons captured as of May 31, 2022, would serve as the benchmark for all poverty alleviation efforts, according to the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Sadiya Umar Farouq
The Minister who was represented by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry at stakeholder’s outreach meeting in Abuja encouraged all agencies and departments to also use the data on all forms of intervention in the country.
The Nigerian National social register, a database of the poor and vulnerable households across the 36 states and the FCT, is the biggest on the continent.
Social registers are typically used to determine eligible people to enroll in different social intervention schemes and are designed to ensure interventions get to the intended beneficiaries.
Nigeria’s social interventions such as conditional cash transfers, skills for job programmes and other forms of support, are mined from this database.
The National Social Safety Nets Coordination Office is in charge of data gathering, with assistance from the World Bank.
A comprehensive database is needed now more than ever, considering the prevailing economic circumstances which is dragging more households across the country, below the poverty line.
Over 11 million households are captured in the database. 58.8% are men, and 21.3%, are women; 18.4% of these are widows and 1.4%widowers.
