BY SEGUN ADEBAYO – Against the backlash trailing the N8,000 palliative proposed by the Federal Government to cushion the adverse effect of fuel subsidy among poor Nigerians, Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa State has defended the initiative as meaning a lot to so many Nigerian households.
The cash transfer programme, which has now been suspended for review by President Bola Tinubu-led, was meant to transfer N8,000 to 12 million poor households in Nigeria for a period of six months to alleviate the sufferings of Nigerians.
Disagreeing with those insisting that the proposed sum would not do much to alleviate the hardship being suffered by the people, Governor Sule maintained that N8,000 is a substantial amount for many impoverished families that cannot access such in a month.
Speaking as a guest on Channels Television’s programme, Politics Today, the governor said there should not be any fuss as the current move is justifiable given the level of abject poverty in the land with many ready to invest the amount productively in small-scale ventures to help their families.
The Nasarawa State Chief Executive, who claimed that the previously distributed N5,000 palliatives by the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration brought succour to many families, said; “We were sharing only N5,000 and believe me there were so many people that were waiting for that N5,000 every month. Indeed, there were some communities that were able to do some kind of contributions and they were able to do a lot in their various communities.”
“So, N8,000 may not be so much money to some people, but it is a lot to so many other people who are from very poor families that don’t see N8,000 every month. So, the only thing is that let us identify those families.”
Governor Sule’s comments come on the heels of Thursday’s National Executive Council (NEC) that agreed on palliative measures for Nigerians with the cash transfers programme scheduled to be implemented through the State social registers instead of national social registers subject to state peculiarities.
While acknowledging the controversies surrounding the existing national social register, the governor admitted that there were cases where people who were not supposed to be in the social register collected funds from the government, adding; “There are issues and that is why I think a lot of new governors and some of us that have been there have been complaining about it.”
Speaking further, he said though the governors do not want that the national social register to be discarded, the arguments are in support of amending and strengthening areas that would make its usage more beneficial to the larger Nigerian society.
Hear him; “We are not saying that it should be discarded, we are just saying it should be looked into and if there are areas of amendments we should amend them”.
