Distrust, Politics and the National Social Register

Postscript by Waziri Adio

Professor Chukwuma Soludo delivered the most stinging rebuke till date of Nigeria’s National Social Register (NSR) while briefing the press, on Thursday, about some of the issues discussed during the meeting of the National Economic Council (NEC). Soludo, the current Governor of Anambra State, used weighty and dismissive words like “there is a big question mark on the integrity of the so-called national social register” and “we don’t have a credible register.”

These heavy words acquired more weight and credibility coming from Soludo, a sitting state governor, a former Chief Economic Adviser to the President, a former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and a professor of Economics. He should have all the facts at his disposal and he should know what he was talking about. Besides, Soludo said this was an issue on which there was ‘near-unanimity of opinions’ among the governors who attended the NEC meeting. The governors, too, should know what they were talking about. But maybe not. Or maybe there are subtexts that need to be decoded.

For context, the NSR is the database of Poor and Vulnerable Households (PVHHs) in Nigeria. It was designed to provide a reliable source of information that can be used to directly channel cash and other supports to the poor and the vulnerable in communities across the country for social protection and poverty alleviation. It is domiciled in the National Social Safety Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO), established in 2016 to manage the social register and national safety nets projects. The register was put together in collaboration with the states and with the financial support of donors.

What has brought the social register into sharp focus is the plan by President Bola Tinubu to use the $800 million World Bank loan to provide relief to the poorest households from the pains inflicted by the removal of petrol subsidy. The president’s proposal, which has been put on hold, was to give N8, 000 per month to 12 million poor and vulnerable households over six months. While some Nigerians are opposed to this plan for different reasons, some others are genuinely curious about how the poor would be identified and how to ensure that the cash transfers will go to the intended beneficiaries and not somewhere else. This is a legitimate concern, given recent experience with the distribution of COVID-19 palliatives. We are a low-trust society, and our politicians and bureaucrats have been working overtime to deepen trust-deficit in the country.

Also, most Nigerians did not know about the existence of a reliable database of poor people in Nigeria and how it was put together. And some of the few who are aware of such a register have their doubts. If government payrolls can have ghost workers, it is difficult to blame Nigerians who are sceptical, or cynical even. The onus is on the government and its relevant agencies to, at all times, ensure effective communication and adequate transparency and accountability. 

In a way, Soludo spoke to the concerns of this group of Nigerians who have valid questions about the credibility and integrity of the social register. But he just didn’t express concerns or seek clarifications. He spoke with authority and in categorical terms. He more or less confirmed those fears and concerns, taking them beyond the realm of doubts to the arena of indisputable facts. This is problematic.

The way Soludo framed the issue, an impression has been created that Nigeria’s social register is a phantom one, cooked with dubious intent, totally devoid of rigour, and most importantly, assembled with no inputs from the states other than someone in Abuja casually calling some random persons in the states and asking them to send whatever lists they could lay their hands on or conjure.

Such an impression is not only incorrect, it is gravely unfair to the process that led to the NSR and the stakeholders that put it together.

The simple fact is that the NSR is an aggregation of the social registers produced by the ministries of budget and planning of the 36 states of the Federation and the process followed is not as flippant as Soludo appears to be making it.

It is safe and charitable to assume that the governors who have a ‘near-unanimity of opinions’ on the lack of a credible social register were not properly briefed. This is understandable as governors have many things fighting for their attention. Also, some of the governors are new and might have not bothered to look into what was done under their predecessors. It is also possible that some of them, like Soludo, would prefer a different methodology to arrive at a more robust register. But there is also a possibility that the governors, or at least some of them, see the register plainly from the frame of allocative politics and patronage.

As stated earlier, all the states and FCT have their social registers, compiled by state officials with guidance on methodology and process provided by NASSCO. It is a decentralised process that accords with giving agency to the constituent units that Soludo spoke about. The idea of someone in Abuja calling someone in Anambra to send any list is not an accurate reflection of how the state registers are compiled before being folded into the NSR.

The starting point for identifying the poor and the vulnerable in each state is the Nigeria Living Standards Survey (NLSS) conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The NLSS contains comprehensive socio-economic and demographic data and is used by the state teams to identify the areas with high incidence of poverty in each state. This is the geographic approach for targeting used for the social register.

The second layer, and the core of the process, is the Community-Based Targeting (CBT) where the task of identifying the poor and the vulnerable households in the different communities is devolved to the community members. This participatory process is led by a CBT team, usually made of a community development officer, a National Orientation Agency (NOA) officer, an agricultural extension officer, a women/social development officer and two enumerators.

The CBT teams are divided into two groups: targeting officers and enumerators. The targeting officers handle the interface with the communities while the enumerators collect the required data on the households. The teams follow a four-step process: pre-sensitisation visits, sensitisation and mobilisation, community engagement and actual enumeration.

The last stage is Proxy Means Testing (PMT) where data gathered by the enumerators is used to create a proxy of incomes and needs of the households and to rank them into deciles of the poorest and the most vulnerable in each community. All these are done at the state level before being transferred to the NSR. It is clear that some thought actually went into designing the process and the methodology of putting the register together.

As at the last count, the NSR covers 748 of the 774 LGAs in the country, 174, 406 communities, 15.67 million households, and 62.69 million individuals in the country. The 15.67 million households covered so far represent the poorest of the poor, not all of the poor in the country. NASSCO and its state counterparts will need to stop winking in the dark. They need to showcase their work and show their workings. Within the limits allowed by privacy and data protection laws, they need to make those in the database life and flesh and visible, precisely because we live in a low-trust environment. The media, civil society groups and other accountability actors should also beam their searchlights on this important register.

Like all databases, the NSR surely will have rooms for improvement, including the need for regular reviews and updates. It is possible that there are deviations between the NSR process in principle and in practice. If they exist, such deviations should be addressed or eliminated. There are also those who believe that the CBT approach, though cheap and easy to undertake, is subjective and open to capture and may not be as rigorous as means testing. This is a methodological issue on which a proper debate can be had.

But these are not grounds for the governors to dismiss the NSR out of hand or throw it under the bus, except they have actually looked into the registers put together by their own officials and found them to be populated with ghost names. That a process possibly needs improvement does not mean that it is lacking in credibility and integrity. We should learn not to make the perfect the enemy of the good.