… Demands Full Disclosure Of Beneficiaries, Payment Trails
The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has described the Federal Government’s social intervention programme under President Bola Tinubu as an “organised racket”, alleging that funds meant for poor Nigerians are being diverted by officials.
The party’s National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, made the accusation in a statement on Monday, following an Auditor-General’s finding that N33.75 billion in cash transfers to 3.29 million households could not be verified against beneficiaries.
“Let us call this what it is. Not mismanagement. Not an oversight. It is an organised racket, which this government has run under the guise of a social intervention programme.
They are stealing from the poor and telling them to continue to endure hardship,” Abdullahi said.
The ADC recalled that N585 million was reportedly transferred to a private account linked to former Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Betta Edu, at the beginning of the Tinubu administration, while another N44 billion allegedly went missing from the National Social Investment Programme Agency under another official, Halima Shehu.
“At the time, the government made a show of suspending Edu. Now she is back in the President’s campaign council,” the statement said.
“This latest report of an unaccounted N33.75 billion intervention fund, buried inside a larger N78 billion fund, and the historical pattern of corruption that has trailed this kind of programme would suggest that this government has found a way to steal from the poor by turning the social intervention programme into a criminal enterprise.”
The opposition party also faulted the government’s announcement of a $1 billion “Renewed Hope Social Protection Programme”, arguing that the administration had yet to demonstrate stronger mechanisms for transparency and accountability.
“Barely weeks before this audit blew up in their faces, they wheeled out a new $1 billion so-called ‘Renewed Hope Social Protection Programme’ with the usual State House fanfare. Given the familiar history, we are in no doubt that even in the unlikely event that this latest intervention is ever implemented, it would end up like the others before it: another racket.”
The ADC linked the growing demand for social interventions to the economic hardship it attributed to the Tinubu administration’s removal of fuel subsidy and devaluation of the Naira.
“Their twin disastrous policies of fuel subsidy removal and currency devaluation have exploded the population of Nigerians living in extreme poverty and therefore needing cash handouts from the government, which has now become a mere pretext for stealing in the name of the poor,” it said.
“This is a government that manufactured hardship with one hand and pocketed the relief with the other. Fuel prices up. Transport costs up. Food prices up. And the one programme meant to soften the blow turns out to be a black hole. Enough is enough.”
The party demanded a comprehensive investigation into the Social Intervention Scheme, as well as the immediate publication of the full beneficiary register, the REMITA payment trail and the names of officials that allegedly obstructed the Auditor-General’s work.