THE National Leader of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has commended President Muhammadu Buhari for the commencement of the payment of N5,000 each to the poor and most vulnerable under the Conditional Cash Transfer programme of the present administration.

The programme was part of the cardinal promises of Buhari during the 2015 campaign.

Asiwaju Tinubu said the stipend for the poor was a sign of the Buhari-led APC government’s commitment to people’s welfare.

He said in a statement by his Media Office: “I commend President Buhari for keeping faith with his campaign promise. I commend him for empathizing with the poor and the most vulnerable among us.

“The payment could n’t have come at a better time than now. The stipend is a sign of the government’s commitment to people’s welfare. We must all unite to beat poverty and bring prosperity to the land.”

Tinubu again called for support for the present administration, saying with such, the government would soon turn things around for the benefit of the people.

President Buhari had started the payment of N5,000 each to one million poor Nigerians under its Conditional Cash Transfer programme, which is one of his cardinal campaign promises.

Under the programme, the President had promised to empower one million poor and most vulnerable with the N5,000 monthly stipend each.

The programme is under the government’s Social Investment Programmes, where N30,000 monthly stipends were earlier paid to 200,000 youths under the N-Power programme, which began in December 2016, and the School Feeding programme.

The commencement of the N5,000 payment was announced on Monday in a statement from the Office of the Vice-President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo.

The statement, signed by the Vice-President’s spokesman, Laolu Akande, said the first batch of payment would cover nine states.

Akande said some of the beneficiaries had started receiving their payments since December 30, 2016.

Akande had said funds for the payments to beneficiaries in Borno, Kwara and Bauchi States were released last week to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System, the platform that hosts and validates payments for all government’s SIP.

He said the funds for another set, which included Cross Rivers, Niger, Kogi, Oyo, Ogun and Ekiti States, would follow soon to complete the first batch of beneficiaries.

According to Akande, the nine pilot states were chosen because they had an existing Social Register that successfully identified the most vulnerable and poorest Nigerians.

He said the registers emerged through a tried and tested community-based targeting method working with the World Bank while other states were developing their social registers and would be included in subsequent phases.

Akande said the Federal Government would commence community mobilisation for the creation of the social registers in more states to expand the scope and reach of the Conditional Cash Transfer across the country.