N5,000 Welfare: Buhari And The Urgent Need For Full Disclosure

“Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.

I.F. Stone, 1907-1989.   (VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, VBQ, p 80).

“You can fool some of the people all the time; you can fool all the people some of the time. But, you can’t fool all the people all the time.”   President Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865 (VBQ p 62)


Buhari, Osinbajo and Adeosun
“There is no way anyone can describe the selection of the beneficiaries of the CBT [Community-Based Targeting} as partisan as the beneficiaries from eight of the nine pilot states were picked even before this administration came into office.”

Mr Laolu Akande, Senior Special Assistant to the Vice-President on Media and Publicity, in a national daily, January 9, 2017.

That comment by Stone entered into the notebook which was later to become the manuscript for the VBQ, in 1965, when taking an elective course in Government as an undergraduate. For someone coming from a newly independent African country, where government officials were almost worshiped, it was shocking – especially in a mature democracy. Years later and until now, that revelation by Stone had become the guiding principle of how governments are perceived.


Buhari, Osinbajo and Adeosun
Like all generalisations, it suffers from the defect of being too broad. But, in the main, nobody can go wrong too often by disbelieving anything government officials, say, until it is discovered to be true. Citizens should not apply the rules in a court of law where an accused is presumed innocent until proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt. In the court of public opinion, skepticism is the best response to whatever government officials say. Most probably, it is untrue – in part,or, wholly.

On Monday, January 09, 2017, Nigerians were treated to the sort of statement that should make all right thinking ones among us ask, “what sort of people do they think we are?”

Even, the village idiot knows that in January 2015, the All Progressives Congress, APC, was not in government. The Nigerian President was one Goodluck Jonathan, whose bad luck was to have lost an election.

Obviously, the CBT on which the current wasteful giveaway programme was based was an initiative of the former government – not the current one.

Furthermore, neither Akande, not his boss, the VP, was in government two years ago. Their presence in Aso Rock had lasted only nineteen months and a few days. Nothing more.

It is, therefore, fraudulent, very fraudulent, to attempt to take credit for work done before they took over. At any rate, the CBT report presented two years ago to the Jonathan administration started much earlier than that.
The objective of that study was not to select one million people to be given N5000 per month indefinitely. It was probably an exercise designed to test if there was a way of identifying the poorest communities not individuals.   Such communities lack potable water, power supply, health services, roads, schools, post offices, good housing and even communications. The objective of the study is frequently to determine the priority intervention of governments and donors wanting to help the communities – not pay individuals. It is sheer intellectual dishonesty to apply a method meant to isolate poor local governments and communities to individuals. Perhaps, Mr Akande will, for once publish the list of names of the people identified by the original CBT for Nigerians to see and for us to believe him.

Meanwhile, there is need to recap the history of the N5000 promise which occurred long before Akande was employed. This is necessary in order to expose the “inexactitudes” contained in every sentence credited to Akande.

The APC, in its election manifesto, had promised a package of welfare benefits under the Social Intervention Programme, SIP, including paying N5000 to five million people, not one million. Nigerians were not told when five million shrank to one million and why?

In a country where close to 90 million live below the poverty line, defined as two dollars (US$2) per day, N5,000 or US0.47, per day to help people out of poverty is a cynical joke. But, now that the number of beneficiaries had been reduced by 80 per cent, Akande owes us several explanations.

First, how were those to be dropped determined? Was it the CBT, which is community targeting scheme, that was used?

Second, he should provide the full list of those dropped and those picked so that others can verify. To be quite candid, few people believe him. We need to be convinced.

Akande might have forgotten, but many of us remember quite clearly, that President Buhari, during his official visit to Qatar, had expressed reservations about the N5000 free money to be paid monthly. This was the first occasion for his wife to publicly plead with him not to drop it. Obviously, it was not a closed matter even then.

Mr Akande has a habit of not remembering what he says from one week to the next and he is steadily destroying the government’s credibility on the Social Programme. On January 2, 2017, a statement issued from the Vice-President’s office and signed by Akande, had informed Nigerians that: 1. some of the beneficiaries had started receiving their payments since December 30, 2016; 2. funds for the payments to beneficiaries in Borno, Kwara and Bauchi, three states only, were released to the Nigerian Inter-bank Settlement System; 3. funds for another set which included Cross River, Niger, Kogi, Oyo, Ogun, and Ekiti States would follow soon (no date given) to complete the first batch of beneficiaries.

  On January 9, 2017, we were told that “beneficiaries had been receiving the monthly stipends in all the pilot states.” When the funds for Cross River, Niger, Kogi, Oyo, Ogun and Ekiti were released to the banking system was not stated. But, Nigerians would recall that December 30, was a Friday which was followed by three work-free days. Work resumed on Tuesday, January 3, 2017. So, when were the six states’ beneficiaries paid – as to warrant the claim that they “had been receiving the monthly stipends”?

Mr Akande must have forgotten that the Nigerian Inter-bank System is not a commercial bank with branches all over Nigeria; it cannot pay the beneficiaries directly. Only commercial banks can pay and invariably they can pay only their customers with BVN numbers. The problem is the poorest Nigerians living in rural areas seldom operate bank accounts because there might be no bank in their community and they usually have no funds to deposit. How such individuals could have received their stipends so quickly is a mystery for Akande to unravel. We only hope we are not
The President and the Vice-President need advice on this matter.

They are the people Nigerians will hold responsible if things go wrong. It is not unusual for officials failing woefully in the discharge of the assignments given to them to resort to issuing false reports. Back in 2007, the nation was heading for the Presidential elections, when the Minister of Works, Mr Ogunlewe, issued a report that the PDP government had fixed 500 Nigerian roads. Former President Obasanjo, ever eager to accept fiction as fact when it serves his purpose, took that report on the campaign trips that year. Nigerians living along Lagos-Abeokuta Express road up to Sango Ota, around Obasanjo Farms, knew that the road leading to the former President’s farm was a death trap. Similarly, those residing along Ikorodu-Ijede-Itoikin-Epe Expressway, were aware that the road leading to Ogunlewe’s home town, Ijede, was untouched. Yet, Obasanjo and Ogunlewe went about telling barefaced lies to the people. There was no reply to VANGUARD’s editorial asking Obasanjo and Ogunlewe to substantiate the claim. At any rate, is it possible for two top officials of government in Nigeria to fix every road but their own communities roads? Two years after Obasanjo left office and he could no longer be flown by helicopter to his farm, he was sighted in a horrible hold-up, caused by the road he failed to fix, at Ota. Today, Mr Ogunlewe is facing corruption charges on account of his “services” at the Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta.

Early in December, Mr Akande announced that the School Feeding Programme had commenced with a pilot project in Anambra State without providing details regarding the schools involved. Undaunted by government’s refusal to provide necessary information, calls were made to Onitsha, Nnewi, Okija, Ihiala, Nkpor Oko and Awka for scouts to locate the schools which have started the programme. None was found until schools closed for the Christmas vacation.

Now, the impression is being created that the programme had started in more states. Where is the proof? History seldom repeats itself. It is human beings, not learning from history, who do.

Officials releasing unverifiable information in order to unfairly claim achievements, forget what late President Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865, told every public servant. “You can fool some of the people all the time; you can fool all the people some of the time. But, you can’t fool all the people all the time.” (VBQ p 62).

Unless Mr Akande releases the names of the schools involved in feeding and people receiving N5,000 stipend per month, we will continue to regard his utterances as pure rumour, at best; or a cover-up, for mismanagement, at worst. And, when he finally releases the necessary information, we will set out, at our own expense, to again verify the claims – irrespective of how remote the place is.

Nigeria has gone past the stage where anybody can fool all of us with partial disclosure. We are also aware that the race for 2019 is on. Elections always cost money and apparently nobody can march to the Central Bank with “instructions from above” to collect huge sums anymore.

We need to be convinced that all is well with this programme.