Atiku Abubakar has asked APC National Chairman Nentawe Yilwatda to explain how the Federal Government paid more than 10 million Nigerians under its N75,000 conditional cash transfer programme when many beneficiaries, according to Yilwatda, do not have phones.
Yilwatda had told journalists after a three-day APC National Executive Council retreat in Maiduguri, Borno State, that many beneficiaries were poor and vulnerable people without phones, television sets or access to social media.
“Mind you, these people who are poor and vulnerable don’t have telephones to make calls; they are not on social media. They don’t have a television. They cannot come and challenge and discuss as we are doing here, but they are out there,” Yilwatda said.
In his Independence Day address on Thursday, Atiku questioned how the beneficiaries were identified, contacted and paid, especially in insecure areas of Borno and Yobe.
“Professor Yilwatda says many beneficiaries have no phones. So how did your government identify, contact and pay them, particularly in parts of Yobe and Borno where insecurity makes access difficult? Did officials deliver the money by hand? If so, who delivered it, and where are the receipts?
“If it went into bank accounts, show the transaction records. If you could find ten million people to pay, you can account for the payments,” he said.
Atiku also accused the Tinubu administration of worsening Nigeria’s cost-of-living crisis.
“The past three years under Bola Tinubu have plunged Nigeria into the most severe cost of living crisis in our history. Families are not merely tightening their belts. They are skipping meals, delaying treatment and borrowing to survive until payday,” he said.
He further questioned Tinubu’s claim that the “emergency treatment” period was over and Nigeria had entered an “age of prosperity.”
“A president may announce a new chapter in a speech. He cannot put food onto a family’s table or money into a worker’s pocket,” Atiku said.
