6.2 Objective 2: Accelerating Socio-Economic Development to Achieve Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication. 6.2.1 The National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP) was created in 2001 with the mandate of monitoring the poverty eradication efforts of the three tiers of Government, Non Governmental Organizations, international Organizations and the private sector. It also engages in special intervention programmes in order to reduce the level of poverty as well as to reach some specifically targeted groups in the country. From 2001 to 2004, NAPEP engaged in four poverty eradication intervention schemes namely, Youth Empowerment Scheme (YES), Rural Infrastructure Development Scheme (RIDS), Social Welfare Service Scheme (SOWESS) and Natural Resource Development and Conservation Scheme (NRDCS). 6.2.2 Since 2008, the programmes have been modified to reach the poorest of the poor in the society and address the challenges of trans-generational poverty, by ensuring that children of the vulnerable members of the society in the rural communities, who were of school age, were enlisted in schools. These programmes were implemented in collaboration with the Millennium Development Goals Office of the President, and were of three types: namely, Multi-Partner Micro Finance (MPMF), Conditional Cash Transfer/Care of People ( CCT/COPE ) and Village Economic Development Scheme (VEDS). 6.2.3 As the names imply, the MPMF was a micro credit scheme financed jointly by the Federal and State Governments in which beneficiaries were required to make a 10% minimum contribution in whatever project they wished to be engaged. The Federal Government invested more than two billion Naira in this programme, which was implemented in all the States of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory. 6.2.4 The CCT/COPE was a grant, a Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programme, in which substantive amount of money was given to identified, vulnerable families among the poorest of the poor citizens in the rural communities. This money was paid over a period of one year on the condition that these 73