The State Commissioner of Economic Development, Mr Emem Bob, disclosed this in Uyo on Monday while fielding questions from newsmen at a media briefing tagged ARISE Score Card with the theme, “Food Sufficiency and Security: The Intervention and Sustainability Strategy of Governor Umo Eno.”
With him at the briefing were the commissioner of information and strategy, Mr Ini Ememobong, the commissioner of agriculture, Dr Offiong Offor; and the chairman of Akwa Ibom Bulk Purchase Agency, Mr Dan Akpan.
Emem said though the state social register has increased to 2.3 million people, the government is reaching out to the vulnerable poor through 600 households captured in the social register.
“The social register is well-structured, it’s structured in such a way that we have broken the villages, wards and local governments, these make up the state social register. The total number of people we have in the social register is 2.3 million individuals
“When you talk about households, we have about 600 households in the social register and that is what we have been using for various interventions in the state,” Bob said.
He explained that the process for selection into the social register is very clear and transparent, adding that the social register has been there for the past 8 years but Governor Umo Eno only ordered that it be expanded to accommodate those who have fallen under the poverty line
He said, “How people are selected for the social register is very clear, it is a very transparent process in the sense that there is what we call community-based targeting. Don’t forget that anything that involves the World Bank is very transparent; they are thorough. Community-based targeting is what was used for the social register, and we have state-organising coordination units that work with the National Social Safety Nets Coordinator unit in Abuja. They work together, and they have staff across the local government. They go to villages and meet with village heads to pick these people.”
Speaking at the briefing, the commissioner of agriculture, Dr Offiong Ofor, said the state government had put in place a lot of intervention programmes to boost food production and reduce the prices of food items in the state.
While calling on the people to heed the governor’s call and return to farming, the commissioner called on farmers to form themselves into corporative groups for easy accessibility.
She said, “Food sustainability remains the priority of Governor Umo Eno’s administration. The first thing is that the Ministry of Agriculture merged with the Ministry of Rural Development, which also has a component of corporations. He was deliberate in doing this because the corporative system is the system that is driving food productivity anywhere in the world.”
The information commissioner, while setting the tone for the briefing, expressed appreciation to Eno for the various intervention programmes of the government to address the current hardship in the state.
