FG To Begin Cash Transfers To 30% Poor- Uwais

The Special Adviser on Social Investments in the office of the vice president, Maryam Uwais, yesterday said the federal government would soon begin conditional cash transfers to poor families to ease hardship.
Speaking during a workshop on Child Poverty and Social Protection in West and Central Africa at the ECOWAS Secretariat in Abuja yesterday, she noted that 30% of the poor in every state and local government would be catered for while the figure would be increased to about 50% next year.

 “For the first time, government has budgeted money for the poor in the country. We have been given the mandate to develop a register for poor people. First and foremost, we are going into the communities organising socio group discussions and asking the communities themselves what poverty means to them,” she said.  According to her, N5000 will be the bench mark for each family.

“There is poverty everywhere but if we say everybody is below the poverty line, poverty is higher in some places than others, so to avoid ghost beneficiaries we have asked them to have BVN so banks can pay directly to them,” she added.

The Commissioner, Social Affairs and Gender at the ECOWAS, Dr Fatimata Dia Sow, said despite intervention by government to improve the lives of children across Africa, most of them were still grappling with extreme poverty which had strongly retarded development.

Credit: dailytrust

Security Agencies Link Ex-Chief Justice Uwais’ Son Who Joined ISIS To Mutallab’s Bomber Son

MOHAMMED, the third son of former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Mohammed Uwais, who allegedly joined bloody terrorist group, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), has been established to have close relationship with Umaru, the jailed suicide bomber son of the former chairman of FirstBank, Alhaji Abdul Mutallab.

Security information obtained by the Nigerian Tribune on Sunday night revealed that on the Christmas day in 2009 when Umaru made a failed attempt to bomb himself alongside 288 passengers in a Detroit-bound 253 flight, Mohammed was the last person to speak with him before he boarded.

Though the content of the conversation was not revealed, Mohammed’s number was said to have been picked as the last caller on Umaru’s call-log before he switched off his mobile-phone and then the failed attempt by the trained engineer to end his life in a suicide bombing attempt.

Umaru, known as the underwear bomber, was jailed for life on January 2, 2012 and serving his prison term at the United States Penitentiary, Florence ADX, near Florence, Colorado.

It was learnt that on the strength of the conversation between the duo, security agencies in Nigeria had moved to pick Mohammed, but powerful forces allegedly stepped in for him, shielding him from arrest.