N33.75Bn Missing Cash Transfer Funds Expose Fraud In Tinubu’s Poverty Programme -ADC
By Sunday Etuka
The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has described the Auditor-General’s disclosure that N33.75 billion in cash transfers to 3.29 million households cannot be verified as confirmation that President Bola Tinubu’s social investment scheme has become a channel for enriching officials rather than helping the poor.
In a statement issued on Monday, ADC National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, said the party would not describe the situation as mere administrative failure, but an organised racket.
“Let us call this what it is. Not mismanagement. Not an oversight. It is an organised racket, which this government has run under the guise of a social intervention programme. They are stealing from the poor and telling them to continue to endure hardship.”
The party recalled that early in the Tinubu administration, N585 million was reportedly transferred to a private account linked to Betta Edu before she was exposed.
It also noted that N44 billion disappeared from the National Social Investment Programme Agency under Halima Shehu, prior to the Auditor-General’s latest report showing that N33.75 billion could not be matched to any verified beneficiary.
“At the time, the government made a show of suspending her. Now she is back in the President’s campaign council,” the statement said. “This latest report of an unaccounted N33.75 billion intervention fund, buried inside a larger N78 billion fund, and the historical pattern of corruption that has trailed this kind of programme would suggest that this government has found a way to steal from the poor by turning the social intervention programme into a criminal enterprise.”
Abdullahi said that rather than tackling the corruption that has repeatedly plagued such interventions, the Federal Government has rolled out an even larger $1 billion package without showing any evidence of improved transparency or accountability.
“Barely weeks before this audit blew up in their faces, they wheeled out a new $1 billion so-called ‘Renewed Hope Social Protection Programme’ with the usual State House fanfare. Given the familiar history, we are in no doubt that even in the unlikely event that this latest intervention is ever implemented, it would end up like the others before it: another racket.”
While calling for a full investigation into the scheme, the ADC argued that such interventions have become necessary in the first place because APC’s economic policies have made it difficult for ordinary Nigerians to earn a decent living.
“Their twin disastrous policies of fuel subsidy removal and currency devaluation have exploded the population of Nigerians living in extreme poverty and therefore needing cash handouts from the government, which has now become a mere pretext for stealing in the name of the poor.
“This is a government that manufactured hardship with one hand and pocketed the relief with the other. Fuel prices up. Transport costs up. Food prices are up. And the one programme meant to soften the blow turns out to be a black hole. Enough is enough.”
The party demanded the immediate release of the full beneficiary register, the REMITA payment trail, and the names of any officials who obstructed the Auditor-General’s investigation.
