300,000 Borno residents get N1bn Aid from NGO

Save the Children, an NGO, on Monday said 300,000 people have benefited from its N3, 500 cash transfer project to help them recover from the effect of crises in Borno.

Mr Chachu Tadicha, the Head, Food, Security and Livelihood, Save the Children said this at a Household Economic Analysis media meeting tagged: ‘’Strengthening Community Resilience through Improved Early Earning and Response Systems in Nigeria’’, organised by the NGO.

According to Tadicha, the 300,000 people that benefitted in Borno where drawn from 56, 000 households and were being given N3, 500 monthly cash transfers to buy food and 28,000 households were also being helped in Yobe.

He said that a household could get between N17, 000 and N25,000, depending on the size of the family, adding that the programme was a humanitarian project, which started since the crises in Borno and continued in 2019, until the situation improved.

“We are also intervening in Zamfara and Jigawa, through the social protection project for five years and we have helped over 100, 000 individuals who benefitted from our N4000 monthly cash transfers.

“The programme started around 2014 and is ending this July, from here, it goes into the Federal Government special protection programme.

“This intervention came about through the Household Economic Analysis (HEA) carried out in that region, HEA is an analysis of strategies people adopt to obtain access to the things they need to survive and prosper.

“ The initial aim of HEA was to improve the ability to predict short-term changes in population’s access to food in Nigeria, HEA is used to improve transfer values, beneficiaries targeting and early warning systems through the Cadre Harmonise policy.’’

According to Tadicha, Cadre Harmonise is a tool which permits classification of the nature and severity of acute food and nutrition insecurity for the current and projected situation.

Mr Nelson Yidawi, the HEA Coordinator, Save the Children said that the HEA was an analytical framework that allowed for response to questions of “how household gets food and income needed, according to different social and economic circumstances.’’

“What are the opportunities and constraints faced by the household, according to the economic and social circumstances?

“And what are the copying options faced by the households during a crisis? ”

Yidawe said that the HEA showed the limits of the household coping strategies as a response to a shock caused by circumstances be it positive or negative and proposed a classification according to livelihood zones and socio-economic categories.

He said that HEA was developed by Save the Children in the 90s to improve the ability to predict short term changes in access to food to household.

He said that HEA approach was carried out by Save the Children in six states namely Bauchi, Borno, Jigawa, Katsina, Zamfara, and Yobe states and planned to design early action activities based on HEA.

Mr Bishop Ohioma, Staff, Agriculture and Business Enterprises, Real Sector and Household Statistics Department, National Bureau of Statistics called for an extension of HEA to more states.

Ohioma called on states and Federal Government to make budgetary allocation for the conduct of HEA and states should take ownership of the HEA in their respective states.

He said that there was need to carry out update of the baseline for states like Bauchi, Katsina and Zamfara putting into account the new livelihood zone produced.