The Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) has assured the citizenry that the ongoing digitisation of its operations will promote digital inclusion and enhance its capacity for an improved social security.
NSITF’s Managing Director Dr. Michael Akabogu said this in Marrakech, Morocco, at the World Social Security Forum at the weekend.
Moderating a discussion session on: Digital inclusion: Improving Social Security Service Delivery, the NSITF boss noted that with the growing digital inclusion in Nigeria, which means the expanding number of citizens with access to internet-based communication, the digitisation of the NSITF would exploit this growing gateway to information for seamless delivery of services.
In a statement in Abuja by the fund’s Corporate Affairs Department, Akabogu said: “Digital inclusion is basically getting everyone online without exclusion and giving them the necessary equitable access to and use of information and communication technology (ICT) for improved social and economic life.
“Digital inclusion as a tool for the improvement of social security service delivery is driven by the elastic impacts which internet-based digital platforms with its widening access to information could weigh on social security provision.
“Even as uneven as access to internet is between rich and poor nations, our organisation is shaping up to tap into the full benefits of growing digital inclusion in Nigeria.
Read Also: We are assisting senate probe of alleged N17.1b misappropriation – NSITF
“The challenge, however, is how a social security organisation positioned to utilise digital inclusion for the improvement of the social welfare of the people can effectively carry out this role. How do we bridge the digital divide to ensure that citizens of all classes benefit maximally through an unfettered access to our services?
“As digital transformation accelerates, its benefits and challenges with respect to digital inclusion are emphasised. For this reason, securing equitable access and inclusion of all communities in an increasingly digital society is a vital cross-cutting theme in the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda.”
The NSITF boss explained that digital inclusion is a great push to the efforts by the agency to grow social security, especially in the informal sector where over 70 per cent of Nigerians earn their living.
“In Nigeria, our agency is a cardinal organisation in the social security agenda in a country where the rural and urban poor constitute a great majority and where the over 70 per cent are in the informal sector.
“For us to achieve part of the United Nations Sustainable Goals on ‘Leave No One Behind (LNOB)’, we had to expand our social service goal to the doorstep of this majority in the informal sector where with the growing access to internet we hope to make considerable gains in no distant time.
“Remember that the LNOB represents the unequivocal commitment of all UN member-states, which we are part of, to eradicate poverty in all its forms, end discrimination and exclusion and reduce inequalities and vulnerabilities that leave people behind and undermine the potential of individuals and of humanity as a whole,” he said.