Fayose disagree over N5,000 payment to the poor

The All Progressives Congress and the Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, have disagreed over the commencement of the payment of N5,000 to about one million poor and vulnerable Nigerians by the Federal Government.While the APC commended the President Muhammadu Buhari administration for fulfilling the party’s promise to Nigerians during the 2015 general elections, Fayose described the payment as a mere propaganda.

The party said the N5,000 conditional cash transfer scheme, which is part of a broader objective to provide safety nets to the most vulnerable Nigerians, was a demonstration of the President’s commitment to the change manifesto of the party.The National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, said this in a statement in Abuja on Tuesday.

The party’s spokesman added,“We recall that as part of its Social Investment Programme, the government has begun implementing three other major campaign promises the party designed to provide jobs and lift the most vulnerable Nigerians out of poverty.These include the N-Power Volunteer Corps, which will provide jobs for 500,000 young Nigerian graduates; the National Home-grown Feeding Programme, which has commenced in selected states, and the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme, which provides soft loans, ranging from N10,000 to N100,000 to artisans, traders, market women, among others.

The party also acknowledged that the past year was a tough one for Nigerians occasioned by the economic recession in the country, expressing confidence in Buhari’s ability to design programmes that would provide succour for the masses. It urged Nigerians to continue to support and pray for the Buhari-led administration so that the dream of a more prosperous, secure and stable nation would be achieved.Fayose, describing the N5,000 initiative as a mere propaganda, advised the Federal Government to stop running government and governance on propaganda.He said, “A blind man will say it is when it gets into my mouth that I will say you are feeding me, not promises.”

The governor, in a statement on Tuesday in Ado-Ekiti by his Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Idowu Adelusi, said there was no evidence of the payment in his state, which is one of the states the Federal Government claimed the exercise had started.He said apparently, the states they claimed had started receiving the payment were the APC-controlled states, knowing that the states’ governors would not disprove the claim. He said the Buhari-led APC government should come to the reality that Nigerians were hungry and also angry, stating that the people were no longer interested in empty promises.Fayose challenged the government to publish the number of people and the accounts of those who had received the money.

The Federal Government had, in a statement on Monday, said, “Funds for the commencement of the payment in four states were released last week to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System – the platform that hosts and validates payments for all government’s social intervention programmes. Funds for another set of five states to complete the first batch of nine states would follow soon.Though the sequence for the payment of the money would be operationally managed by NIBSS, beneficiaries in Borno, Kwara and Bauchi states have started receiving the money.The other states in the first batch to commence the CCT payments are Cross River, Niger, Kogi, Oyo, Ogun and Ekiti states.

SOURCE: PUNCHNG

FacebookTwitterGoogle+WhatsApp