NSIP: Humanitarian Ministry trains 350 beneficiaries of Mobile Money Transactions

Rahila Lassa, Abuja.

Last updated Oct 26, 2021

Training for 350 beneficiaries of Mobile Money Transactions as part of the Federal Government’s National Social Investment Programmes (NSIP) has begun in North-west Nigeria.

The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq flagged off the training programme in Kano State.

She said the youth empowerment event was specially designed to address youth restiveness, generate gainful employment and create wealth nationwide.

According to her, President Muhammadu Buhari’s Administration has paid more attention to alleviating poverty amongst the vulnerable in the country.

“In the last 5 years, over 12 million households have benefitted from the National Social Investment Programmes (NSIP).

“In view of the life-changing experience of beneficiaries of the NSIP, President Buhari has graciously approved the expansion of the programme in all the clusters mainly to ensure that more lives are lifted out of poverty.

“The Mobile Money Agents’ Programme was introduced in 2020 to sustain the social inclusion agenda of President Buhari’s Administration. It is consistent with the President’s vision of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty by 2030.

“The programme is designed to empower unemployed youths and develop their competence to operate as registered mobile money agents. This training will enable these beneficiaries to meet the minimum technical and business requirements for becoming mobile money agents and enhance their entrepreneurial competence to successfully start and manage mobile money businesses,” she explained.

Earlier, the State Focal Person, Baba Aminu Zubair, stated in his goodwill message, that Kano State had benefited the most from the Federal Government’s Social Investment Programmes.

He noted that 11 schools currently have STEM Centres with 214 students as beneficiaries, while 154,000 poor and vulnerable people from 15 local government councils received Conditional Cash Transfer.

Mr Zubair thanked the Federal government and the Minister for the training of 60 Mobile Money Agents in the State, while enumerating Kano State’s gains from government’s Social Investment Programmes:

“Kano State has 10 National Home Grown School Feeding Program aggregators, 12,258 cooks and vendors and 1,225,804 pupils receiving one nutritious meal each, under the school feeding program.

“We had 18,000 beneficiaries under N-Power Batches A& B and 13,000 under Batch C as well as 296 Independent Monitors.

“Under GEEP 1.0, 250,000 beneficiaries in Kano State received interest-free loans, while registration for GEEP 2.0 is ongoing.

“88,400 rural women also benefited from government’s N20,000 one-off grant”.

After the five-day training , the beneficiaries will be formally registered with the Shared Agency Network Expansion Facility (SANEF) as Mobile Money Agents and will be provided with start-up Kits including a Point-of-Sale (POS) Machine,

Fingerprint Scanner, chairs, tables and umbrellas and a token of N20,000.00.

A total of 1,850 youths selected from the 36 States and the Federal Capital Territory are expected to be trained.