Atiku criticises Tinubu over N33.75bn cash transfer payments

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 under the government’s cash transfer programme.

He spoke in a statement issued on Saturday by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu.

According to Atiku, the amount involved was already too small to meaningfully cushion the effects of the rising cost of living.

He noted that N33.75 billion shared among 3.29 million households amounts to about 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 government had promised support for vulnerable Nigerians but was now facing questions over the whereabouts of funds meant for them.

“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 government’s varying figures on the number of households that benefited from the intervention programme.

Atiku said the government had claimed that more than N600 billion was disbursed to over 10 million households, while Nigerians had earlier been told that about 15 million households were beneficiaries.

He argued that the conflicting figures made it difficult for Nigerians to determine who actually received the money.

He further criticised the reported N36.74 billion in payments allegedly made without pre-payment audits, as well as 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.

He said the team would examine beneficiary figures, payment channels, reconciliation records and audit queries before presenting its findings to Nigerians.

“There must be no black box around the poor man’s money,” he said.

Atiku also called for a shift from what he described as temporary palliatives to economic policies that would improve people’s purchasing power and reduce the cost of essential goods and services.