The Center for Human Rights and Accountability Network (CHRAN), has faulted the allocation of a whooping N70 billion of the palliative fund to the National Assembly members under the guise of “supporting the working conditions of new members.”
Rather, CHRAN urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to initiate people centric and good welfare programmes that will reduce inflation, unemployment, creates empowerment and capacity building through skills acquisition, saying these programmes will have direct bearing on the poor masses.
The human rights group made the assertion in a press release signed by its Director, Otuekong Franklyn Isong and Deputy Director, Public Affairs, Comrade Vincent Aluu and made available to journalists in Uyo on Friday, July 14, 2023.
It, however, lauded the Federal government of Nigeria for declaring a state of emergency on food security, noting that it was a timely intervention given the devastating effects of flooding, rising cost of farm inputs in the country.
The group which commended President Tinubu for approving the immediate release of fertilizers and other farm inputs to help in boosting food security in Nigeria, however, disagreed on the planned N500 billion palliative to 12 million households who will be placed on N8,000 stipends per month for a period of six months.
The CHRAN wondered what the paltry sum of N267 per day will solve for a Nigerian given the present low purchasing power and high inflationary trends.
The pro-democracy group queried the method used by the federal government to determine the benefitting households, insisting that the programme is another political settlement for the political class and the rich in the corridors of the government at the detriment of the poor masses.
The CHRAN noted that the inability of the Nigerian government to identify and properly track its citizens through a well documented national register despite the proliferation of biometric identifications renders the programme a wasteful political venture.
The group further urged Mr. Bola Tinubu to expedite action to privatising or selling out rightly the nation’s refineries and to making policies favouring modular refineries as permanent solution to the fuel subsidy removal rather than coming up with temporary measure that will only serve interest of selfish politicians.
