By Emeka Alex Duru
Editor
With statistics and instances from Brazil, Mexico and Bangladesh that have successfully pulled some of their citizens out poverty line, former Anambra State governor and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Vice Presidential candidate in the 2019 general elections, Peter Obi, has described the N5,000 conditional cash transfer by the federal government as being paltry and inadequate to take vulnerable Nigerians out of their present piteous state. The programme, he added, is transactional and unsustainable, considering its six-month time frame.
The former governor who made these declarations at the Arise Television flagship talk show, The Morning Show, on Tuesday, February 2, 2021, broke down the cash transfer package to the 24 million estimated Nigerians, arguing that the figure, boiled down to less than 40 cents a day. This, he said, is insignificant and inadequate to pull the citizens out of poverty line. The amount, he said, is too meagre to make meaningful impact on the people, adding that its six-month duration, further compounds the situation. Any attempt at lifting the people, he argued, would require them being put in jobs that would fetch them at least, N25, 000 a month.
“Paying the people N5, 000 will not pull them out of poverty. And stopping it after six months, makes it more problematic. What happens after six months?” he asked. Any agenda that will pull Nigerians out of poverty, Obi argued, should not be government-driven, else it becomes transactional, adding that a conscious effort in this regard requires articulated policy that is well-implemented and measurable. “You don’t just wake up in Abuja and say you are paying 24 million Nigerians N5, 000 each. Who are those people to be paid? What are the criteria? What we are doing today is transactional. Has anyone told us the beneficiaries of the N10, 000 given out before the 2019 elections? Who are they? Where are they? We need to have a properly articulated fiscal policy to be able to stimulate the micro, medium and macro-scale economic activities to fully impact on the people”, Obi remarked.
He recommended mobilisation of community-based micro-finance banks to empower Nigerians at the rural levels, stressing that these institutions are the ones that know the people. The former governor, expressed his opposition to the proposed sale of some national assets to finance the 2021 budget, describing the idea as amounting to committing suicide. As an alternative, he suggested reducing the cost of governance at all levels.
He also took critical look at Nigeria’s education, scoring it low and observed that the situation in the sector, has negatively affected the economy and development of the country. Nigeria, he lamented has staggering statistics of out-of-school children and those that had not been to school at all, warning that it portends a bleak future.
On COVID-19 management and vaccine importation, Obi observed that things are not going on as transparently as they should and made case for local production to minimize cost. He charged the newly appointed Service Chiefs to urgently address the security challenges in the country, stressing that local and international businesses can only thrive in secure environment.
The PDP chieftain urged the federal government to pay heed to the recent Transparency International Corruption Rating on Nigeria, arguing that it is not only when such pronouncements are favourable to the country that they would be acknowledged. He blamed corruption for the underdevelopment of the country, noting that Nigeria has more poor people living below poverty line than China and India combined. He debunked insinuations of controversy trailing the recent elections by Ohanaeze Ndigbo, stressing that the South East has more challenges than being bothered with the emergence of Prof George Obiozor as the President of the body.