The Federal Government has begun the training of 5,000 Independent Monitors to monitor the activities of the National Social Investment Programmes (NSIP) and beneficiaries across the country.
Minister of Humanitarian Affairs,, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajiya Sadiya Umar-Farouq disclosed this at the inaugural ceremony on Thursday in Abuja.
Umar-Farouq said” the Independent Monitors will be assigned to monitor programme beneficiaries within their locality in schools, households, and market clusters with the focus of ensuring that the primary objectives of these programmes are achieved.
According to her, the” training follows an intensive two weeks workshop at the National level by the Monitoring and Evaluation Committee set up by the Ministry to develop a framework and Data Collection Tools for effective monitoring process.
Umar-Farouq said the NSIP was created by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2016 and comprises N-Power, National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP), Conditional Cash Transfer Programme (CCT) and the Governmentt Enterprise and Employment Programme (GEEP).
The Minister stated that the scope of the Programmes are large, with about 13 million citizens across 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) benefitting from the interventions
She said the training which is first in the line of other training programmes was organised to get the monitors acquainted with their schedule of duties and warned participants against any form of malpractices or fraud as the Ministry would not hesitate to hand them over to security agencies like the EFCC and ICPC who also work with the Ministry.
