Palliative: Cash transfer a scam – Gov Uba Sani

INDEPENDENT NG

Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna State has criticised the already suspended N8,000 cash trans­fer palliative by the admin­istration of President Bola Tinubu to indigent Nigerians households, describing it as “a scam.”

Tinubu had proposed to transfer N8,000 to 12 million Nigerian households for six months to cushion the effect of the removal of petrol subsidy.

But this had triggered out­rage among Nigerians, forcing the president to order a review of the scheme.

During an interview with ARISE Television, Sani, said there was no certainty of an accurate and updated database of the Nigerian people that will benefit from the scheme.

The governor said, “My po­sition has always been that, at this critical time, cash transfer should not be something that we should bring up. I think that cash transfer for me, in my opinion, is a scam. Completely it’s a scam. I can be very certain about that, because who are you transferring the money to?

“Let me give an example, go and check the current sta­tistics. Like I said, as the Chair­man, Committee of Banking for four years in Nigeria, I over­sight Central Bank, I oversight all the commercial sectors of our economy for the last four years and I looked at the sta­tistics, I will be very firm on this issue and you can go and check it.

“About 70 to 75 per cent of the rural population in North West are financially excluded completely. You will have to go and check, these people we are talking about are important people in the society. They do not even have a bank account so who are you transferring the money to?”

He also said the social regis­ter has not been updated, giving a case study of the North West region, that about 70% of the rural population was not cap­tured in 2019 due to insecurity.

He said this as he defended the position of the National Executive Council (NEC) say­ing the social register lacked credibility.

“In my opinion, what we said was that the social regis­ter should be updated. If you are aware, some of the names were put together as far back as 2019. And of course, nothing is constant.