By Ishola Adeleke, YeyeNews.com, November 9, 2021
President Buhari has expressed shock that over 100 million Nigerians have entered into poverty in the last one year despite billions on social investment programs. According to a source in the presidential Villa the president made this known during a meeting with the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management in his office.
“The president expected that the N5000 conditional cash transfer to poor households should have lifted millions out of poverty, but surprisingly more people are plunging into penury in the country”, the source said. However, in responding to the president’s reactions, the source disclosed that the minister blamed the vice president for the failure of the social investment program to make the expected impact. She accused the VP of diverting the funds into the Tradermoni scheme in which money is disbursed to traders that are already established in business while leaving out the poor and vulnerable. She then requested the president to increase the number of households in the conditional cash transfer program to 5 million for it to have better effect.
An aide of the vice president who pleaded anonymity told YeyeNews.com that the Tradermoni scheme of the VP was not designed as a poverty alleviation scheme but is actually for indirectly buying votes for the APC during elections. “The minister is just looking for who to blame for her utter failure. Tradermoni actually contributed largely to APC winning many elections because it supplemented the party’s vote buying mechanism. The scheme was not designed for poverty alleviation. Let the minister tell Nigerians why the same region she claimed to have spent most of the social investment program funds in still has the highest poverty rate in the country? The president can be shocked as much as he wants but until the needful is done concerning the minister, nothing will change”, the aide said in anger.
Meanwhile, after randomly interviewing over hundred people on the streets of the country, YeyeNews.com reporter could not find anybody who knows anyone that have benefitted from the conditional cash transfer. “I don’t know anybody that have received any money from the program even though I live in a very poor neighborhood”, a resident of Oshodi in Lagos said. “But for the Tradermoni I know it is just money for the boys. Nobody repays anything”.
