The federal government has said that it will commence disbursement of the recovered $322 million Abacha loot through Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT) to 302,000 poor households in 19 states in July.
NAIJ.com gathered that Tukur Rumar of the National Cash Transfer Office (NTCO), said this at a roundtable on assets recovery organised by the Swiss embassy on Thursday, June 28, in Abuja.
The event was organised to intimate citizens and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) on the efforts both nations were making on asset recovery after the Post-Global Forum on Assets Recovery (GFAR) held in Washington D.C. in December 2017.
At the forum, Nigeria made commendable commitments on beneficial ownership, tax transparency, asset recovery, transparency management of recovered funds and payments to victims of corruption.
The states are: Niger, Kogi, Ekiti, Osun, Oyo, Kwara, Cross River, Bauchi, Gombe, Jigawa, Benue, Taraba, Adamawa, Kano, Katsina, Kaduna, Plateau, Nasarawa, Anambra and Internally Displaced Camps (IDPs) in Borno.
According to Rumar, the benefiting households will receive N5,000 monthly and are derived from the National Social Register (NSR) that the 19 states are already on. He said the programme was designed to also train beneficiaries on livelihood skills, social skills and other programmes that would change their lives completely. Rumar, however, said NCTO had been making payments to the 46,000 poor and vulnerable households across the 19 states since December 2016, adding that the number had increased to 290,000.
Iorwa Apera, the national coordinator, National Social Safety Net Coordinating Office (NASSCO), said 503,055 households were already on the NSR register from the 19 states, adding that by July, there would be a social register for all the states of the federation. He said of the Abacha loot, about 302,000 poor homes across the 19 states would be mined by the NCTO to begin to receive the Abacha loot.
Linda Ekeator of the office of the Special Adviser to the President on Social Investment said the Abacha loot was invested in the social investment programme, because it was a programme that was already supported by the World Bank. She said before the money was returned to Nigeria, there was an agreement with the Swiss government that it should be used for alleviating poverty and this was to be done with the supervision of the World Bank.
The Swiss Ambassador to Nigeria, Eric Mayoraz, said the $722 million of the Abacha family money that was hidden in Switzerland was fully repatriated in 2005.
