The Minister for Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajiya Sadiya Umar Farouq has described as baseless the claims that she has brought nothing to Zamfara State as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria
The Minister who was addressing participants at a stakeholders town hall meeting in Gusau on Tuesday said, the claims were baseless and unfounded.
According to the Minister, the state was among the states that benefitted immensely in the programs, citing examples with the following;
The Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) provided 129,137 poor and vulnerable households in some local government areas in Zamfara state with a monthly base cash transfer of N5,000, with the sole aim of graduating them out of poverty.
She maintained that, the sum of over N6 billion was disbursed to seven local government areas of Bungudu, Birnin Magaji, Talata-Mafara, Kaura-Namoda, Tsafe and Anka under the Conditional Cash Transfer.
She gave the breakdown of cash transfer to these local Governments as follows;
Bungudu local government received the sum of N1,093,240,000.00 for 14,831 out of 14957 households.
Birnin Magaji got ₦678,520,000.00 for 13687 out of 13858 households.
Talata-mafara got ₦847,330,000.00 for 25817 out of 26,438, Kaura-Namoda received
₦1,450,550,000.00 for 31467 out of 32,731 households.
Tsafe Local goverment got ₦1,256,010,000.00 for 18,056, out of 18229 and Anka local government received the sum of ₦765,930,000.00 for 25,279 out of 25,551.
On the N-Power programmes Hajiya Sadiya said “the program has catered for 10,346 beneficiaries in Zamfara, from inception to date.
On school feeding program she declared that “Approximately, 282,529 pupils in Zamfara State are being fed in 1,759 schools across the 14 LGAs with meals prepared by over 2000 cooks”.
The Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) is a flagship programme of the FG that has three prominent products which include TraderMoni, MarketMoni and FarmerMoni spread across 2,678 Clusters or markets, traders and farmers.
To stimulate economic activity, she said the Government Enterprise Empowerment Programme( GEEP ) has provided loans to 48,503 individuals in Zamfara State.
She also declared that ‘The Humanitarian action carried out by the National Emergency Management Agency and the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons have provided relief interventions after a fire outbreak to Gusau local government area and the distribution of drugs, food and non-food items in Gusau, Mahdi Gusau, Anka, Maradun, Shinkafi and Zumi, respectively”.
The Minister stressed that the Cash Transfers will be expanded to cover an additional 1 million households, nationwide.
She added that “Of this exp
ansion, Zamfara will have a total of 138,861 new beneficiaries, in addition to the 130,000 currently being paid through the Cash Transfer programme’.
“We have worked assiduously with the State government to provide the good people of Zamfara State with programmes, however we are cognisant of the fact that to improve we must engage to identify any gaps and work with you all collectively to address the challenges.
It could be recall that the Minister was in Zamfara as part of the directive of the President that all members of his cabinet should return home to interact with their local communities and brief them on what the Federal government is doing to change things for the better.
