Subsidy: N5bn grant to states unscientific, says ACF Spokesman
By Emma Ogbuehi
The Spokesman of Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Professor Tukur Muhammad-Baba has described the N5billion in palliatives and grant to the state government as shambolic and unscientific.
The Federal Government had on Thursday, approved N5 billion for each state and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to enable them to procure food items for distribution to the poor in their respective states.
But according to Daily Trust, Muhammad-Baba, a Professor of Sociology, who expressed his view in an interview, said there is no basis for giving the same amount to Lagos, Oyo, Kano and Bayelsa states, as their populations and statistics of eligible people differ.
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He said, “I am not happy about such blanket distribution of N5 billion to each state. In the first place, there is no basis for the distribution. I mean, if you are looking for poor people, are you allocating the same amount to Bayelsa, Lagos, Oyo, and Kano states, and you expect it to make an impact?
“This shows that we are doing things like what grammar people call ‘hunter’s pack’. You don’t plan, you don’t strategize, you just came out and made an announcement on that. There is no basis for sharing money to states on an equal basis.
“We are talking of poor people and poor people is a question of proportion, we know there are over 140 million poor people in Nigeria. The number of people suffering from poverty in Lagos, Oyo, and Kano will not be the same with those living in poverty in Bayelsa, Taraba, or Jigawa. So, what is the basis? What impact is it going to make?
“You are accompanying it with 30,000 bags of rice. How many people is that going to reach? Take a state like Sokoto, for example. They have over seven million people by the latest National Population Commission estimate. So, how many people are 30,000 bags of rice going to feed?”
He noted that the government is not working on a definite plan saying, “The government is implementing a shambolic policy, you need to come to the aid of the poor people, there is no doubt about it, that is scientific, but you need to do it in such a way that your intervention will not be a drop in the ocean.”
Human rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) Femi Falana, had expressed similar views on Friday during a Television interview, where he argued that the N5 billion fuel subsidy removal palliatives the federal government released to the state governments was diversionary and wasteful.
Falana, rather, called on the federal government to address the root cause of the economic hardship in the country rather than give palliative to states.
