At least 14,000 beneficiaries in Kwara State are receiving N5, 000 monthly under the Federal Government’s household uplifting programme, also known as Conditional Cash Transfer Scheme.
The head of the programme in Kwara, Aminat Yahaya, disclosed this yesterday during an interview with newsmen in Ilorin.
According to her, the beneficiaries are drawn from 480 communities in the 16 Local Government Areas of the state.
“Every local government has 30 communities uniformly. When we multiply this by 16 local governments, it gives us 480.
“So we have over 14,000 beneficiaries from the state so far. Of course there is a plan to step up that number”, she said.
When asked when the number would be increased, Mrs Yahaya said, “we wouldn’t know because we are not directly in-charge of targeting the beneficiaries.
“Ours is to pay to the beneficiaries. So as soon as names are available, it will be shared with us and once it is shared, we will commence payment.”
She explained that as one of the eight pilot states, Kwara had started receiving success stories from the beneficiaries of the programme as the money helped in changing the lives of the beneficiaries for better.
“The whole programme is about household upliftment; changing their situation from what it is for the better, and one of the strategies we put in place is forming them into groups.
“We have what we call savings and group mobilization training for all the beneficiaries, where we taught them how to save from little to big and most of these beneficiaries have been able to follow on the example we gave them.
“With the coaching they were given, some of them have gone into petty trading. But the petty trading did not just start like that.
“In the group formation, they formed themselves into cooperative groups within a community. During every payment circle, they make rotational contribution among themselves,” she said.
According to her, “they inject this contribution into their businesses and they are telling a good story today.”
