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If the Federal Government claims that 2.6m households have benefited from the N20,000 palliatives, does that imply that 52 billion Naira was shared amongst Nigerians? I’ve been pondering on this to make sense out of it.
The FGN needs a better strategy, because if after this huge amount has been disbursed to households, I’m still getting loads of calls and pressure from many of my people asking for my help with palliatives, then the Government strategy isn’t right.
Even to this day, a lot of my colleagues are facing the same pressure from their people for palliatives. The MHR is a bridge between the FG and the people, but due to the failed structure of our Nation, people are misinformed and frequently look up to lawmakers as executives believing there’s a budget for them to be used to cater for all their individual needs.
Well, it’s hard to understand how N20k was distributed to 2.6m households. So, I reason that a more beneficial and “economical” approach would have been used to distribute the money, especially via Local Government Areas.
For instance, if the Government had given at least N10million to each of the 774 local government areas in Nigeria. It would have cost the FGN N7.7billion (saving N44billion) and will reach far and wide to a lot of people in the country.
For the sake of practicality, let’s break this down using this simple example, I represent 4 Local Government Areas in my Federal Constituency namely ISEYIN, ITESIWAJU, KAJOLA, IWAJOWA LG areas of Oyo State – If I supervise the distribution of N10 million to 500 people at N20k per head in a Local Government Area. It will be more cost-effective and the impact will trickle down. And for accountability, the list of all beneficiaries and their account numbers would be pasted on a notice board at the ward level. Because every LGA is divided into wards. It takes nothing to paste the list of about 50 beneficiaries in every ward in the country. I have a total of 42 wards in my Federal Constituency and I should be able to give a report of the beneficiaries per ward. Also, the FG through the ministry can do a direct transfer to the beneficiaries on the list which also must be pasted at every ward in the country and give us a report with transfer receipts.
If the same is replicated by all members of the House of Representatives the impact would be felt than FG distributing 52b to 2.6m households that can’t be verified.
I wonder how the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, disaster management, and social development came about her list, and how that money was disbursed across the geographical spread.
There are lessons to be learnt from this COVID19 pandemic.
