1. APPENDIX 2
CONDITIONAL CASH TRANSFER SCHEME
AN OVER-VIEW OF EFFORTS TOWARDS ATTAINMENT OF GOAL 1
(HALVING THE PERCENTAGE OF EXTREME POOR AND REDUCTION IN
HUNGER) IN NIGERIA
INTRODUCTION:
Nigeria, which was one of the richest 50 countries in the early 1970s, has retrogressed
to become one of the 25 poorest countries at the threshold of the twenty first century. It
is ironic that Nigeria is the sixth largest exporter of oil and at the same time host the
third largest number of poor people after China and India. Statistics show that the
incidence of poverty using the rate of US $1 per day increased from 28.1 percent in
1980 to 46.3 percent in 1985 and declined to 42.7 percent in 1992 but increased again
to 65.6 percent in 1996. The incidence increased to 69.2 percent in 1997. The 2004
report by the national Planning Commission indicates that poverty has decreased to
54.4 percent. Nigeria fares very poorly in all development indices. According to the
most recent statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics Report on “Nigeria
Poverty Profile 2010”, 60.9 percent of Nigerians in 2010 were living in absolute
poverty as against 54.7 percent in 2004.
The problem of poverty and how to reduce it remains the most pressing challenge in
the international development debate. Poverty is said to be multi-dimensional,
consequent on the fact that it can be as a result lack of Technology, Lack of Education,
Lack of adequate health services, Inability of the growth to provide decent jobs,
inadequate data on the nature, sources and causes of poverty including its intensity and
spread. It can also be attributed to lack of the much needed synergy by the different
arms of Government in addressing poverty.
The above statistics portrays that despite various poverty alleviation initiatives by
successive administrations, the level of social impacts of these initiatives leaves much
to be desired. Over the years, poverty alleviation has been an integral component of

2. APPENDIX 2
Nigeria’s development plan and specialized agencies were established to promote the
objective of poverty reduction. It is important to highlight that all the 8 MDGs Goals
are primarily geared toward tackling issues of poverty, deprivation and hunger.
The OSSAP-MDGs was set up to assist Nigerians to meet the 8 MDGs Goals.
Contingent upon the multi dimensional nature of poverty there is need to provide
additional investment in Health, Water and Sanitation, Education, Agriculture etc in
other to stem poverty in Nigeria. This led to the creation of the Office of the Senior
Special Assistant to the President on MDG’s. Since its creation, the office had
concentrated its efforts towards the provision additional funding to critical sectors that
could help Nigeria meet the MDGs. There were additional investmentsin Health,
education, provision of water and sanitation and in the areas of Social Safety Net.
SOCIAL SAFETY NET:
It is in response to this, that federal government through the MDGs introduced a new
innovation in the fight against poverty and the subsequent attainment of Goal 1 that
lead the Federal Government to introduce the Social Safety Net in 2007 with an
appropriation of N10billion. The initiative entails a non-contributory transfer programs
seeking to prevent the poor or those vulnerable to shocks and poverty from falling
below a certain poverty level. Safety net programs can be provided by the public sector
The Social Safety Net Scheme as implemented by the National Poverty Eradication
Programme, (NAPEP) comprises the scaling up of ongoing Schemes for the
empowerment of economically active women, farmers and youths.
The Social Safety Net (SSN) as deployed by the federal government at its inception
encompasses the following:
Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT);
Support for Youth Empowerment through the provision of Keke NAPEP
in 2007;

3. APPENDIX 2
Support for Micro Credit the in 2007
Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT). The Conditional Cash Transfer entails the provision
of grants to targeted poor households on the condition of investment in human capital
development and it consists of two main components of payment: the Basic Income
Guarantee (BIG) and the Poverty Reduction Accelerator Investment (PRAI).
The implementation of the CCT in the country since its inception in 2007 to date has
witnessed several innovations towards its improvement. The CCT now is been
implemented under the CGS platform. This has brought tremendous increase in states
buy-in and has led to, not only increase in funds available to the programme through
the payment of matching grants by the states, but, has also created greater chance for
the sustenance of the scheme. The scheme is presently encouraging flexibility in the
implementation as opposed to the rigid centrally controlled CCT in order to encourage
states to modify conditionalities to suit their desire to meet the MDGs. a state may
place health, education, nutrition or ante natal care visit for pregnant as its
conditionalities to assess the funds.
OBJECTIVE OF THE CCT:
The objective of the CCT Scheme is to improve the effectiveness of conditional cash
transfer mechanisms to provide adequate incentives for extremely poor families to use
available education and health services for children and pregnant women while
increasing household consumption.
SCALING UP OF CCT FOR ATTAINMENT OF GOAL 1 AND MDGS 2015:

4. APPENDIX 2
It is imperative to highlight that on inception of CCT in 2007, the scheme was
deployedthrough NAPEP and was piloted in 12 states. This was subsequently scaled up
to 36 states in 2008. This method centrally coordinated CCT implemtation had its
challengessuch as:
Low buy-in by the states and local governments. They viewed the scheme as
a federal intervention which does not need their spport;
Inadequate funding mechanism due to lack of matching grants from state
and local government;
Ownership and Sustainability of the scheme through NAPEP was lacking.
This was what informed the switch in strategies and led to the implementing of CCT
under a more successful intervention, the Conditional Grants Scheme(CGS). In the
2009 3 pilot States of; Jigawa, Cross-River and FCT were selected for the
implementation of the scheme. The successes recorded in this method led to the
scaling-up of the scheme to 10 states in 2011 and under the 2012 round of the
Conditional Grants Scheme to State an impressive 24 states were selected to
implement the CCT with a total of N5billion as the Federal portion of funds to the 24
benefitting state, with a matching grants of N5 billion from implementing states. On
completion of the 2012 round of the CCT under the Conditional Grants Scheme a total
56000 households would have benefitted and this would greatly affect the economic
landscape of the implementing States.
It is important to note that Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on
MDGs is projecting that by 2013 all the 36 states of the federal including FCT would
be benefitting from the Conditional Cash Transfer under the Conditional Grants
Scheme. This mile stonewill immensely go-along- way to reduce poverty and social
exclusion currently evident in many parts of the country.
OTHER INTERVENTIONS TO REDUCE POVERTY:

5. APPENDIX 2
Other germane interventions were also initiated by OSSAP-MDGs to tackle Goal 1
such as:
OSSAP-MDGs collaborating with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture to
Creating value chain for cassava other agricultural produce geared towards
wealth creation and employment generation with budget of N5billion.
In addition, the CCT programme exist strategy is to provide an addition sum
of N100,000 cash grant to each of the participating households. This sum is
expected to be channeled into small scale farming enterprise of each
household. Households will be supported to invest in poultry, fishery,
backyard vegetable production etc in order to add to the Nations food
security, create wealth and reduce hunger.
THE NEW IMPROVED CONDITIONAL CASH TRANSFER(CCT)
Having Spearheaded the introduction of CCT in Nigeria since 2007, and having known
fully our strength and challenges as a nation in its implementation, the Office of the
Senor Special Assistant to the President on MDGs decided to review the process of
CCT implementation in Nigeria to increase its outreach sustainability and to plug-in all
leakages in the pro-poor Social Safety Nets. The following measures were introduced
thus;
State Buy-in:
Hence forth, State and Local Government shall be empowered under our
CGS platform to implement CCT. This is expected to create flexibility the
co-responsibility of the households state can implement CCT on education
or Health.

6. APPENDIX 2
E-transfer System through Mobile Payment:
The use of paymasters is now abolished. This is to eliminate cases of non-
payment or short payment, delay in payment or short payment report in
some States. Hence forth all payment is to be done through e-mobile
banking services. We are collaborating with EcoBank to make a success
of this e-transfer system. On our part, we have procured 56000 cell-phone
to these to extreme poor 56000 households to make a success of the
programme.
E-registration of Participating Households:
One of the key success area of any CCT is the targeting of beneficiaries in
line with international best practices. Targeting or selection of households
is not complete if the selected household is not enrolled. Over time, we
have discovered that manual registration is fraught with problems of
identification during payment. In order to address this, we introduced e-
registration of participating households using a bio-snap e-registration
mechanism. Through this method, each selected householdsis now been
registered electronically to ensure that adequate baseline data of each
household is kept for subsequent evaluation.
Poverty Mapping:
It is widely accepted among development partners in Nigeria and beyond
that one of the major challenges facing us as a country and many third
world countries is the absence of or inadequate data for efficient
allocation of scarce resources for development.
Successive governments have attempted to address issues of poverty,
deprivation and hunger with little or no success. Poverty alleviation
efforts weremarred by inadequate statistics on the nature, spread, severity
and causes of poverty in each of the local government or ward where the
poverty reside. It is in response to this and our strong desire to channel the

7. APPENDIX 2
nation resources to where and how it is needed most, that lead MDG’s to
investment Poverty Mapping. This Poverty Mapping is a more drilled
down statistics of poverty in each state, local government and
communities. This Alas of poverty is constantly been used to allocate
MDGs resources in order to obtain maximum impact.
ADVOCACY AND LAUNCH OF CONDITIONAL CASH TRANSFER BY
SSAP-MDGs
The Senior Special Assistant to the President on MDGs in her effort to fast-track the
process towards the attainment of Goal 1, initiated an Advocacy, Sensitization and
Flag-off Visits to the 24 Statesin the Federal including FCT. This initiative was
germane, contingentupon the slow pace toward halving extreme poverty by 2015.
These visits afforded the SSAP the platform to share experiences on best practices,
flag-off the programme and also motivate the states to fast-track implementation
processes.
SSAP FLAG-OFF CEREMONY OF CONDITIONAL CASH TRANSFER IN
SOKOTO STATE

8. APPENDIX 2

9. APPENDIX 2
PAYMENT MADE TO A BENEFICIARY

10. APPENDIX 2
SUCESSS STORIES
The CCT implementation towards attaining Goal 1 though still gaining momentum,
has been able to prevent over 100,000 basic school aged children from dropping out of
school. The project has also supported the utilization of basic health service
infrastructure in the rural areas by adding a health component to the conditionalities for
children of under-five to access basic health service of immunization, vaccination
before household receive cash transfers.

11. APPENDIX 2
Indigent beneficiaries especiallywidows and the aged through Conditional Cash
Transfer programme have been able to realize the dreams of sending their children
back to school, have access to primary health care, paid steepens at the month for the
upkeep of the family for a period of one year and also receive an accumulated savings
investment at the end of the year.
NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS IN 2012:
The 2012 MDGs CCT program is supporting 24 states across the six geopolitical zones
of Nigeria. The criteria for states to be eligible to participate in the operation include:
(i) state ownership and funding of current and related programs; (ii) the level of
poverty using HCDI index; and (iii) geographical spread. The states are:Ebonyi,
Enugu, Anambra, Abia, Akwa-Ibom, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo, Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Ekiti,
FCT, Niger, Plateau, Kwara, Kebbi, Jigawa, Sokoto, Kano, Borno, Bauchi, Yobe, and
Adamawa.
It is also pertinent to highlight that:

12. APPENDIX 2
A total of 600 (six hundred) communities are benefiting from the
programme (25 communities per state);
A total of 5 billion has extended to states for this program (90% direct
project fund and 10% coordination)
A total of 56, 250, 000 Households is benefiting from the MDGs CCT
Cash transfer in the 24 states across the geopolitical zones;
24 CCT Operational accounts have been opened and the funds, N187,
500, 000.00 needed for the take off of the CCT in the 24 states have been
credited with Eco Bank; and
A CCT database server, containing all beneficiaries’ baseline information
is housed in the MDGs CCT server room.Most of the participating states
have provided their matching grants of N187, 500,000.00.