Laolu Akande, former Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, has clarified the origin of the National Social Register (NSR), asserting that it was developed by individual states rather than the Federal Government.
He made this clarification while speaking as a guest on Channels TV’s Politics Today on Wednesday night.
Akande said the NSR “is not a property of the Federal Government. If you look at the way it was developed, it’s actually the state governments that were most instrumental in developing those list.”
He said the Federal Government only put the lists from the states as a database.
He said “As we speak, virtually every state government uses the database that they have created for different programmes that are not even from the Federal Government.”
The National Social Register (NSR) is a database that contains information about vulnerable and poor households across the country. It serves as a tool for identifying and providing social assistance to those in need, aiming to alleviate poverty and improve the lives of marginalized citizens.
On the issue of President Bola Tinubu’s Ministerial List, Akande said state governors elected under the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) will have tremendous influence.
He said, “The governors of the APC, especially the Northern governors were able to stand for the right thing when we were almost on the verge of tweaking the zoning balance.”
“So, you will imagine that people like that will also have a tremendous influence on what is gonna happen,” he added.
According to him, the governors of the APC were very instrumental to Tinubu’s success in earning the APC presidential ticket.
