Nigerian Governors, as part of the National Economic Council, recently met in Abuja in their quest to find a quick fix to the second fuel hike, post President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s less than two months presidency. Following the removal of fuel subsidy by the President, barely minutes after his inauguration on May 29, 2023, petrol, which hitherto sold at N185, jumped to N500 per litre.
But while Nigerians were still pondering on what befell them, some demons crept into the pump and turned up the gauge. One litre is now being sold at N617. And, according to indications from players in the sector, the gauge is still climbing!
So alarmed and perhaps scandalised by the likelihood of any revolt by the citizens, the Governors scurried to Abuja and under the leadership of the Vice President Kashim Shettima, convened an emergency NEC meeting. But at the end of several hours of deliberations, instead of throwing up their hands in desperate helplessness regarding a quick fix to the economic hardship, they chose three of them to tell Nigerians about their solution through cash transfers, paying workers/pensioners what they are owed and to release and distribute grains to Nigerians. Their shopping list was longer, but the three highlighted stood out.
To create the impression that all the governors are one irrespective of party affiliations, three of them addressed the press: Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State, elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress; Mohammed Abdullahi of Bauchi State, a member of the Peoples Democratic Party; and Prof. Chukwuma Charles Soludo of Anambra State elected on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance.
Abiodun talked about the concluded plan by state governments to implement cash transfer programmes using state-generated social registers. He said states-generated social registers would better reflect the number of vulnerable Nigerians to be reached with such cash transfer or palliative scheme. “It is states that are better positioned to do that enumeration to ensure the integrity of the social register,” Abiodun told State House correspondents after the NEC meeting. He said states-generated register “is aimed at enhancing the integrity and reliability of the National Social Register and ensuring that resources go to the intended beneficiaries.”
In one fell swoop, the governors dumped the Buhari National Social Register, which as of 2023, had captured over 61 million vulnerable Nigerians eligible for various government social programmes. Abiodun explained: “We also proposed that each state begin to plan towards implementing a cash transfer programme based on their social register.”
The idea by the governors as disclosed by Abiodun is to implement the transfer of cash for six months to all civil servants in the first instance. He said the six months cash award policy would allow sub-national entities to pay their public servants a prescribed amount of cash monthly. The implementation of the CAP would be based on the individual capacity and priority of various states, he added.
But what is cash transfer in the face of the biting economic situation in the country? How many people are covered by this programme? Even Abiodun who is doing the talking, does he have such policy in his State?
He went further to say that part of their resolution is that the governors on getting back to their domains, should pay all outstanding financial obligations to those that are due including backlog of salaries and pensions to pensioners. “NEC explained the importance of the proposed cash award policy for civil servants, payment of outstanding liabilities to civil servants, and providing Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises with single-digit interest rates to support business growth, amongst others,” Abiodun added.
For the umpteenth time, cash transfer can never be the solution to the hardship in this side of the world. Thank God one of the governors, who perhaps voted to be politically correct during their meeting, has come out to say that cash transfer is a scam.
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The Kaduna State Governor, Uba Sani, in an interview, 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?”
Anything else left to be said?
Soludo had reinforced this during his own address that all previous social registers, especially the one compiled by the Buhari administration, lacked credibility and integrity. He said: “There’s a big question mark about the integrity of the so-called National Social Register. We have questions about how those names in the register were brought about and I’m sure one question I hear asked is whether it is for the most vulnerable group. Now, in thinking through that, we felt that sitting in Abuja and calling on somebody in Anambra to compile a list and send it to you and then the person, depends on who he brings, and the registers are generated and people go to those villages and ask where those people are and they don’t show up.”
The former CBN governor, who called for stress testing as a means to generating a credible register, added: “If you are delivering any such national or federal programme from Abuja, it needs to be delivered via the governments that are there using their format and mechanisms to generate the comprehensive register. That meets certain criteria, that you can stress test and you can call out the people in the village and everyone will confirm that these are the vulnerable people if you are targeting vulnerable people, as it were. So the integrity test is what is missing with that register. Many have just described what is being counted as National Register as bogus; some describe it as a phantom, some in all manner of terms.”
He urged state governments with outstanding salaries and allowances to prioritise clearing the backlog instead of implementing cash transfers.
On his part, the Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed, said the Federal Government would distribute 252,000 metric tons of grains to states at a subsidised rate. He also said the National Emergency Management Agency has been ordered to release food items to the populace to cushion the effect of the rising cost of food.
And to think that these people attended the same hours-long meeting and asked to brief the press? And each with discordant tune?
So where is the quick fix to the current problem in all these? None. And that is what they refused or dodged to tell Nigerians. They don’t have any quick fix. There is no quick fix. They should be bold to tell Nigerians the truth just as the former Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, advised during the build up to the 2023 election.
Sanusi had addressed a cross section of Nigerians, governors, including Tinubu, who was then the APC presidential candidate, in Kaduna that politicians should be bold enough to say the truth. He had said: “Let me remind our politicians, you must prepare the minds of Nigerians for difficult decisions. Anybody who tells you it is going to be easy, please don’t vote for them because it is either he is lying to you or he does not know the job he is going to get. You can not with this level of debt service; with this level of collapsing revenue, with this level of poverty, you can not but take corrective decisions.”
We will implore the Tinubu government and the governors to be humble enough to tell Nigerians that they don’t have any answer to the current economic hardship in the name of a quick fix. That way hopes will not be continuously raised and continuously dashed.
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