Former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has said that President Bola Tinubu’s plan to spend $800 million as palliatives to cushion the effect of Federal Government’s removal of oil subsidy will make Nigerians poorer.
Atiku in a statement issued by his Special Assistant on Public Communications, Mr Phrank Shaibu said the President’s plan to hand out N8,000 to 12 million households for six months, is a paltry N53 per day, and said it is attempt to divert public funds.
Atiku who is candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the February presidential candidate, noted that Tinubu’s fuel subsidy palliative “was reminiscent of former President Muhammadu Buhari’s conditional cash transfer and COVID-19 intervention initiative which saw politicians keeping food items and provisions in their homes while the poor went hungry.”
He recalled that Buhari’s interventionist programmes only ended up making Nigerians poorer as shown in reports released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBC).
“According to statistics, a Nigerian household as at 2019 counted on an average of 5.06 members.
“So, with Tinubu’s uninspiring plan, each individual in a household will get N1,600 per month or N53 per day. What should they do with it? Use the money to buy sachet (pure) water or a cup of boiled groundnut on a daily basis?
“This is the man they claim transformed the economy of Lagos State. This must be a joke or a more sinister attempt to divert public funds,” he said.
Atiku argued that Tinubu lacked a clear economic policy apart from taxing Nigerians, and noted that the president “boasted that he would develop Nigeria’s economy like that of Lagos but this was all a scam.
“Statistics show that over 70 per cent of Lagos revenue comes from income tax paid by private companies which had been in Lagos for decades due to its status as Nigeria’s former capital.
“His only plan is to tax Nigerians to death, as he did in Lagos and that is why the people of Lagos rejected him in the last election.
“Tinubu promised to turn Nigeria’s economy into a $1 trillion economy but it is all a scam and can never be achieved with his brand of ‘agberonomics’.”
According to him, Tinubu ought to have focused on putting money into the agricultural sector and subsidising production and working at attaining energy security that is the backbone of spurring desired economic growth from SMEs, if he was really serious about reviving the economy.
The former vice president noted that agriculture makes up about 30 per cent of Nigeria’s GDP, and advised the president to invest in the production aspect of agriculture and other issues affecting crop yields.
“The rural areas which are mostly agrarian are in the throes of insecurity. Under Tinubu’s watch, over 200 people have so far been killed. However, he seems clueless on how to tackle this menace.
“The so-called palliatives that Tinubu seeks to share to the poor are just another avenue to divert public funds.
“For years, the Nigerian government has rejected calls to publish the list of the beneficiaries of the so-called palliatives but this has never been done because it is all a scam.
“Tinubu should stop trying to deceive Nigerians who are still suffering from the effect of his lackluster economic policies,” he said.
He also expressed concerns that the plan is a reinvention of old tricks through which the All Progressives Congress (APC) uses public funds as subterfuge for vote buying.
Atiku recalled Buhari’s Trader Moni, which he said, was “a means to use public funds to prosecute political campaigns and objectives.
“It is even more telling that the current imposter government is contemplating the initiative when there is high expectation that the presidential election tribunal is set to give judgement in the controversial election that brought Tinubu into government.
“The APC is a political party that has lost favour with a vast majority of Nigeria, and it is no coincidence that since 2019 when the party invented the charade of Trader Moni, it also incontrovertibly introduced the menace of vote buying into Nigeria’s body politic.
“A special investigation into the Trader Moni initiative by the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari revealed that more than N20 billion was wasted on corruption, kickbacks, fraud and partisanship.”