Atiku Questions N33.75bn Cash Transfer to 3.29 Million Nigerian Households
The presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, has criticised the Bola Tinubu administration over the handling of N33.75 billion reportedly paid to 3.29 million vulnerable households through the government’s cash transfer programme.
Atiku raised the concerns in a statement issued on Saturday by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu.
According to the former vice president, the amount reportedly distributed was already insufficient to provide meaningful relief to Nigerians struggling with the rising cost of living.
He said the N33.75 billion shared among 3.29 million households works out at approximately N10,258 per household.
“Nigerians are already facing higher transportation fares, electricity costs, food prices and taxes following the removal of the fuel subsidy,” he said.
Atiku said the Federal Government had promised interventions for vulnerable Nigerians but was now being confronted with questions over the handling and whereabouts of funds allocated for such support.
“This is beyond a bookkeeping scandal. The intervention is insultingly small, yet even that small amount cannot be cleanly accounted for,” he said.
He also questioned the different figures provided by the government regarding the number of households that benefited from the cash transfer programme.
Atiku said the government had claimed that more than N600 billion was disbursed to over 10 million households, while Nigerians had previously been informed that about 15 million households were beneficiaries.
He argued that the inconsistencies in the figures had made it difficult for Nigerians to establish how many households actually received the payments.
The ADC presidential candidate further criticised the reported N36.74 billion in payments allegedly made without pre-payment audits, alongside N4.62 billion for which payment vouchers were reportedly not provided.
“Nigerians cannot be expected to trust the same government to investigate transactions that are already being questioned by auditors. We will therefore set up an independent team of financial, audit, technology and public-accounting experts to examine the records and trace the money as far as the available records permit,” he said.
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Atiku said the proposed independent team would review beneficiary figures, payment channels, reconciliation records and audit queries before making its findings available to Nigerians.
“There must be no black box around the poor man’s money,” he said.
He also called on the Federal Government to move away from what he described as temporary palliatives and instead pursue economic policies capable of improving Nigerians’ purchasing power and lowering the cost of essential goods and services.
