Deborah Ocheni The Federal Government through the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, has engaged 67 independent monitors in Plateau State to track the various packages from the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) for the vulnerable members of the society in line with President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration vision of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty.
Speaking at the event for the distribution of engagement letters and Tablets to the trained independent monitors in Jos, Farouq said the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) was created by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2016 with the mandate of lifting citizens out of poverty through a number of social interventions. She said the programmes include the job creation programme N-POWER, National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP), Conditional Cash Transfer Programme (CCT) and the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP).
The representative of the minister, Deputy Director of Planning, Research and Statistics, Safiya Sani, said: ‘‘We flagged off the training of 5, 000 Independent Monitors for the National Social Investment Programme in Abja, the training was carried out across the country from February to April and each independent monitor is expected to monitor a designated number of beneficiaries of the National Social Investment Programme. The minister warned the independent monitors not to assign their responsibilities to third parties and urged them to carry out the assignment with utmost sense of patriotism, diligence and sincerity.
‘‘The ministry reserves the right to disengage an Independent Monitor for misconduct or noncompliance with set guidelines and directives. I hereby urge you to carry out this assignment with utmost sense of patriotism, diligence, and sincerity.
Earlier in her address, the Executive Assistant to the Governor/Focal Person, National Social Investment programme, Sumaye Hamza, noted that taking into cognizance the quantum of intervention programmes by government and the number of beneficiaries, the need for monitoring became imperative. “We are all aware that monitoring helps to improve performance by tracking result. At this level, the purpose of monitoring is to track implementation and outputs to understand the effectiveness of NSIP generally.
