Niger, Kano, Katsina, Nassarawa, Adamawa, Taraba, Jigawa, Gombe, Bauchi, Plateau, Benue, Kogi, Kwara, Ekiti, Osun, Oyo, Internally Displaced Camps (IDPs) in Borno, Anambra, Cross River, according to Tukur Rumar, representative of the National Cash Transfer Office (NCTO) are the 19 States that will benefit from the $322 million Abacha’s loot in a Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) scheme.
First, that Switzerland and the World Bank insisted the Abacha’s loot must be disbursed to the poor as a precondition for repatriation is a tale of ignoramuses full of bullshit and signifying lies. It’s the kind of talk a man in my village calls ‘Animal talk’.
On the contrary, it is the recipient country, from whose coffers the money was stolen from that gets to determine what use to put their money into.
Linda Ekeator of the office of the Special Adviser to the President on Social Investment, said the money was invested in the social investment programme, a euphemism for ‘sharing the money’, because “it was a programme that was already supported by the World Bank.”
She didn’t say the WB asked Nigeria to share money to its poor. In the same report, she stated that before the money was returned to Nigeria, “there was an agreement with the Swiss government that it should be used for alleviating poverty and this was to be done with the supervision of the World Bank.” How this translated to “the World Bank asked Buhari to share money” is the work of those who think Nigerians are cows.
Also note that this money sharing has been going on since December 2016, obviously as an investment among voters against 2019.
The president disburses this money among the poorly educated in the rural areas, where as usual, it will be called ‘Buhari Money’ -as if the president is dashing out money to the poor out of his good heart- and when voting time comes, these people will be given more money and asked to vote for their benefactor, Buhari.
It is corruption and bribery that gives Mohammadu Buhari undue advantage over other presidential aspirants who do not have $322 million to share to poor voters before 2019. It’s plain voter bribery and Nigerians should speak up.
You might want to know how the government know which homes are ‘poor’ and eligible, but first, see how the government arrived at this list of 19 out of 36 states.
There is something they call a National Social Register (NSR) where poor homes are supposedly listed. How there is an NSR and only 19 states are on it, and out of these 19 states, 14 are in the North, and of the 5 from the South, only 1 each from the East and South-South and 3 from the West is another absurdity to be looked into.
Iorwa Apera, the National Coordinator, National Social Safety Net Coordinating Office (NASSCO), a government’s body involved in these disbursements has this to say; “Some of the states delayed, but the other ones were quick enough to set up infrastructure that allowed us to start work there, but all the states are now on board as they have set up their state operating offices and donated office equipment to us.”
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the fastest fingers first thing and the winners happen to be 14 northern states (with Iorwa’s and Buhari’s states making the list) and 5 southern states with almost none out of the biggest possible contributors to that loot making the list.
How does a nation employ such an arbitrary method to disburse such money with the aim of alleviating poverty? What happens where JAMB or NECO adopt such donate-and-register methods before they enrol students for exams?
The entire scheme is fraudulent and has no aim of alleviating poverty at its true core. States like Bayelsa, Delta, Rivers, Edo, Akwa Ibom and even Lagos whose economies sure contributed the largest percentage of the money Abacha stole are NOT on the list.
I wanted to know whether my people, the Ekpeye, possibly one of the poorest groups in Nigeria will make the next list so I made calls and sent messages to Port Harcourt as to why the state couldn’t provide facilities and donate equipments so its many poor can also benefit from this bizarre style of governance. Those in the PDP ignored my enquiry. Only APC members had time to reply and the answers were pathetic.
“We never heard they are sharing money o! We didn’t even know there is a National Social Register for poor homes in Nigeria. So President Buhari has been disbursing funds to poor homes since 2016?” One asked me.
“I personally didn’t know there was an NCTO until you said so now,” another said.
But the most tragic reply was, “Why are you acting as if you don’t understand Rivers politics anymore? Even if there’s an arrangement for states to provide offices or a list of names to benefit from this sharing, you know Nyesom Wike will never provide such facilities and list.
” You dey talk as if you no sabi the kind badbelle politics we dey do for this state! He won’t provide the names or facilities so he can always sing his usual refrain about how the federal government has not done anything for Rivers state, so he can continue to discredit the APC and Rotimi Amaechi.
“You want him to open up a means for Buhari to be paying Rivers people money so they will go and vote APC instead of PDP abi? I hope you haven’t forgotten how it is down here o!”
Forget the inadvertent admission that such payments are just election gimmicks for votes and has nothing as poverty alleviation and instead consider the even more tragic truth that Governor Wike will rather have Rivers people suffer than allow any federal project that will grant any modicum of validation to his political opponents in the APC. Yet there are Rivers people I know whose parents and relatives would have benefited from this because they are very very poor, but may not because the man whose praises they sing daily wouldn’t let them.
But would Wike’s wickedness have found an outlet had the FG not instituted such a bizarre and arbitrary method of poverty alleviation? It’s as if governance under Mohammadu Buhari government is a PT Barnum show.
That this sharing has been going on since 2016 with only 19 states partaking in the circus is an issue Nigerians who demand accountability from their government must interrogate properly.
