The controversy that is trailing the ongoing distribution of palliatives sent by the federal government to the states of the Federation in order to cushion the biting effects of the removal of fuel subsidy is a failure and a doom long prophesied.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in his recent nationwide address to Nigerians in which he addressed a number of burning socioeconomic issues that escalated as a result of his sudden removal of fuel subsidy during his inaugural speech on May 29, 2023, at the Eagle Square Abuja, announced some major economic interventions his government would adopt so as to alleviate the sufferings orchestrated by the removal of subsidy.
The measures included agricultural, entrepreneural and industrial loans to relevant stakeholders. Others included reintroduction of mass transport system. Under this circumstance, hundreds of buses would be bought and distributed to the 36 states of the federation in order to ease the cost of transportation for workers and the masses.
Then a provision was made for direct cash transfers to the poorest of the poor that shall be identified through a thorough scrutiny. These are among several other promises made by the president.
Already, states have started receiving as much as the sum of N5billion to that effect. In many states, what they do is to buy truck loads of indomie, rice, maggi, among other perishable food items. Interestingly, like the Buhari administration’s distribution of COVID-19 palliatives and Social Intervention Programme, the Tinubu administration is equally toeing the same path of shameful and chaotic pattern.
We stood with other well-meaning Nigerians and opposed the policy, especially cash transfers and provision of humanitarian items to citizens through the state governments. Indeed, we have been proven right by the current controversies that have been trailing the distribution of the palliatives.
Going by different reports, before many citizens had heard about it, politicians have already hijacked the money and palliatives.
We wonder why the Tinubu administration that condemned the Buhari administration’s mismanagement of the humanitarian programmes would follow similar corrupt pattern that has failed to meet the minimal expectation of Nigerians?
