CONDITIONAL CASH TRANSFER PROGRAM AS A STRATEGY FOR POVERTY ALLEVIATION IN KANO STATE NIGERIA
ABSTRACT
The  study  analyses  the  effect  of  Conditional  Cash  Transfer  (CCT)  program  on  poverty alleviation in Kano state with specific focus on school enrollment outcome, health attendance, poverty reduction and the challenges of the CCT program in the study area. The stratified sampling technique was used to determine the specific local government to be drawn from each senatorial zone. A total of 175 beneficiaries were selected out of 4500 beneficiaries using Yamane’s  formula  for  determining  sample  size.  The  study  used  structured  questionnaire techniques of data collection. The data were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistical  techniques.  The  result  of  the  descriptive  analysis  was  presented  in  frequency distribution tables and percentages; while the results of inferential analysis were estimated using chi-square test and probit regression model. The major findings of the study show; that CCT program has improved on school enrollment in the sampled communities as well as registration to health clinics. With respect to factors influencing parents attitudes to send their children to school such as parents educational background, occupation of the households heads, distance from dwellings to school, both the chi square and the probit model coefficients are not statically significant at 5%, meaning that those factors had no influence. Rather parents patronize the CCT because of the sensitization campaign of the program and awareness created by other agencies such as UNICEF,UNESCO on the importance of children education.  It was also found that, the sampled household heads had strong perception that CCT program could serve as a strategy for poverty alleviation, because they believed that education of the child would expose the child to future better economic opportunities. Based on these findings, the major recommendations made by the study are, that the conditional cash transfer program should be replicated in other local governments in the state, since it has improved school enrollment and registration in health clinics. In addition, the program should be fully implemented as designed, since it is line with the MDGs program, it will achieve the desired objectives. Monitoring and evaluation of both the staff, beneficiaries and the schools and the primary clinic  involved in  the implementation of the program should be carried out from time to time for efficient outcome, and that the time frame of the beneficiaries should extend beyond the normal two years for more desirable outcome.
CHAPTER ONE
1.1 INTRODUCTION
Poverty is an old age concept in economic literature. This concept has inundated the economic political and social climates in Nigeria. The hydra headed Munster has been tackled by various Nigerian governments; Conditional Cash Transfers‘ (CCT) is one of those strategies‘ employed in recent time. The conditional cash transfer program (CCTP) is a recent development in poverty alleviation strategy by the Nigerian government. It is a program that gives cash incentive to parents to send their children to school. The program was first initiated in Mexico in 1997 when they realized the essence of building human capital for economic growth and breaking poverty circle.  Nigeria  developed  its  own  version  of  the  Conditional  Cash  Transfer  called  ‗Project Comfort‘ in 2007. The project was first initiated in three states Kano, Bauchi and Katsina, as a pilot to encourage enrollment in most impoverished, with the support of the Department for International  Development  (DFID), United  Nations  International  Children  Educational Fund (UNICEF) and the World Bank also have CCTs designed specifically to improve enrolment of children within the universal basic education (Holmes et al., 2011,).
The poverty rate in Nigeria has doubled over the past two decades despite strong economic growth: at 69% with a total population of over 170 million out of which 70% as extremely   poor and  above  60%  of  the  population  are  below  18  years  (World  Bank  Report,  2014).  The distribution is disproportionate given the nature of this percentage, it is significant to incorporate this people into social welfare system that would bridge the gap and reduce the extent of inequality accessibility and availability of some of the basic needs like education, health and
housing. Therefore CCT is seen as a project that would encourage   poor household to send their kids to school in other to enhance the enrolment rate and reduce mortality rate in the process.
Prior to pilot take off in the CCT program in 2009, Kano State recorded poverty rate of 61.26% in 2004 and this rose to 72.3% in 2010 with non-poor (above poverty  line) of 27.3% compared to Lagos and Abuja with 59.2% and 59.9% respectively (NBS Nigeria, 2012). Evidence from Kano  state  health  statistical  data  in  2014  shows  that  mortality  rate  was  estimated  to  be 1,025/100,000.  This   figure   appears   to  be   considerably  high   for   a   developing  nation. Consequently,  to  close  the  rank  between  mortality  and  poverty  rate,  the  state  government introduces the CCT program because of the health component so as to reduce the motility rate in the state. An intuition that may likely suffice as self-evidence is that State with high poverty incident may tend to be associated with high mortality rate. For instance, based on World Bank (2014) survey on mortality in Nigeria‘s under-five mortality rate is among the highest in the world (ranked 18th  out of 193 countries). This suggests that there could be some possible link between high cost of health care and low utilization of medical services which may have been exacerbated by the crisis of diminishing purchasing power in some cases this may even lead to inability to pay for increasing drug and cost of treatment. Meanwhile, indirect and direct costs of schooling may be contributing to low educational attainment, with net attendance at primary school at 62.1% National Population Commission (NPC, 2008).
Evidence from National Literacy Survey (2010) shows overall adult literacy rate was 71.6 % and youth literacy rate in any language was 85.6%, out of which 28.4% are non literate adult and 14.4% are non literate youth. Among the adult literacy male share accounted for about 79.3% while that of the female was 63.7% respectively. Unfortunately, majority of Nigeria‘s non-literate population are found to be based in the northern region of the country because educational awareness appears to be less compared with other part of the country. There is a belief that majority of these illiterates could be inhabitant of the rural areas. The Northern part of the country tends to have more of its population being poor, for instance, states like Jigawa is considered as the poorest among the North West state with 87% poverty incidence. Typical characteristics of the poor are high illiteracy rate, as well as high mortality rate especially among children below the age of five. Poverty Incidence by State (PIS 2009)
The  indices  from  Annual  Abstract  of  Statistics  (2012)  shows  that  a  cross-section  of  the population in Kano state have more share of non-educated population as poor compared to the educated population .The statistic reveals that 68.7% of the total non-educated population remain poor while only 50% of educated population  was recorded as being poor . This shows that lack of education in Kano state accounts for more poverty with about 18.7%.
Existing literatures shows  that there is a strong nexus between poverty and level of education on the one hand and the level of education and culture/ tradition. For instance People or households with low level of education are generally assumed to be poor. The low level of education may be a function of the cultural background of the individual. A more vibrant poverty alleviation strategy  especially  in  situations  where  cultural  factors  played  a  role in  understanding  the relationship  between  poverty,  education  and  culture,  one  of  such  program  adopted  by the Nigerian government is the Conditional Cash Transfer Program (CCT). It is a program that gives cash incentive to parent to send their children to school and register them with a health clinic.
* MSC ECONS.