The Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, has organised a one-day capacity building workshop for 7,500 independent monitors across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, FCT.
The workshop is aimed at sharing the experience of individual monitors and to document lessons learnt during the course of implementing and monitoring and evaluation of the Social Investment Program.
Speaking during the event, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq said the ministry has developed a robust Monitoring and Evaluation system to ensure successful implementation of NSIP.
According to her, the system is in three layers at the Local Government, State and Federal levels.
“Today I am here to flag off a national “review & appreciation” workshop for Independent Monitors across the Country. These monitors have been with us for one to two years and have been a pivotal part of the program. As they conclude their engagement with us we want to use this opportunity to thank them for their services.
“This workshop will provide them an opportunity to look back at the last two years that they have worked with us and consolidate on capacity built and document lessons learned in the programme monitoring. The workshop also provides an opportunity to improve future programme design and implementation.
“At the Local Government level, we have enrolled the services of 7500 Independent Monitors to carry out programme monitoring in 36 states and the FCT. The Independent Monitors collect and submit routine data from 774 Local Government Areas.
“At the state level the Ministry partnered with an International Nongovernmental Organizations to serve as Third-Party Monitors for the NSIP. These CSOs provide an additional layer of monitoring for the programme. They also provide mentoring and capacity building to the Independent Monitors in their assigned states. Additionally, they coordinate the institutionalization of regular performance review at the state.
“The third layer of monitoring is provided at the Federal level by the Ministry personnel through routine monitoring and supervision visits on a quarterly basis,” she said.
Also speaking, the National Coordinator NSIP, Umar Bindir, said effective monitoring was deployed for the trader money received by women as officials went to poor households and monitored the dispensation and the release of the grant of N5000 and the Federal Government’s cash transfer that even expanded to a grant for vulnerable groups and women.
On her part, the Team Lead of the programme, Dr Fatiya Musah, said there were over 200 independent monitors out of the 400 independent monitors in the FCT.
Musah said the FCT monitors have been monitoring the program in the six area councils from Bwari, AMAC and on the other area councils in the FCT.
According to him, they have built capacity in monitoring and evaluation and a lot of them have become experts in the field of monitoring and evaluation.