The Governor of Kaduna State, Uba Sani, has referred to the planned policy of the Federal Government about cash transfers as a con job.
Earlier, the Tinubu administration had proposed to distribute N8,000 to each of the nation’s 12 million households on a monthly basis for a period of six months in order to mitigate the impact of the termination of the petrol subsidy.
After hearing complaints from Nigerians, the proposal was eventually scrapped.
On Friday, during an appearance with Arise Television’s News Night, Sani indicated that there is no reliable database of those who will benefit from the project. He made this statement when speaking about the programme.
The Governor stated, “My stance has always been that, at this critical time, cash transfer should not be something that we should bring up. I believe that it would be irresponsible to do so.” In my opinion, the cash transfer is a con job, and I think you should avoid it. It’s a total and complete con. I can say with absolute certainty that this is the case since I know to whom you will be sending the money.
“Permit me to illustrate by way of illustration; check out the most recent facts. As I previously mentioned, I have served as the Chairman of the Committee of Banking in Nigeria for the past four years. In that role, I have been responsible for supervising the Central Bank of Nigeria as well as all of the commercial sectors of our economy. After reviewing the figures, I have decided to take a very hard stance on this matter, and I invite you to verify my claims for yourselves.
“Approximately seventy to seventy-five percent of the rural population in the North West are completely isolated from the financial system. You will need to go and verify this information because the persons about whom we are speaking are significant members of the society. They do not even have a bank account, so where are you planning to send the money if you are transferring it?
Before beginning to implement the cash transfer plan, the governor said that the government should first make sure that those people who are excluded from the financial system, particularly in the North West, are cared for and brought into the financial system.
“Let’s try our best and work very hard to ensure that they are financially included; this is the most essential thing, and I would want to call on our development partners, the World Bank, to spend more money towards bringing more people into the financial sector, and the vulnerable in particular. ”
“Let’s put more money to ensure that we open accounts for them and get them involved,” he added. “If we don’t do that, money will go to the wrong people, that’s the fact.” “Let’s put more money to ensure that we open accounts for them and get them involved.”