Time ticking for Tinubu to save poor, vulnerable Nigerians

<p>• FG’s Intervention Must Be Science-driven Or It’ll Fail, Says Olurode</p>, <p>For 38-year-old Joseph Musa, a mason in Abuja, life has not been too rosy, considering his meagre earnings and the enormous burden of having to fend for his family of four.</p>, <p>According to him, surviving has become even more difficult since the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu-administration was sworn-in, no thanks to the multiplicity of economic policies and reforms that it has been introducing without corresponding measures to cushion the shock effects on low-income earners.</p>, <p>Musa is, however, not alone. From Lagos to Benin, Jos, Makurdi, Kafanchan, Yobe, Uyo and Port Harcourt, there are millions of under-privileged Nigerians who are groaning under the weight of the ripple and harsh effects of President Tinubu’s knee-jerk policies while government ponders it options.</p>, <p>President Tinubu recently ordered a review of a proposed palliative initiative, which was meant to have N8,000 distributed to 12 million households over a six-month period through the social register.</p>, <p>The Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs had in the last few years, especially for the larger part of President Muhammadu Buhari’s tenure, been doing cash transfers to the poor using the social register.</p>, <p>But with many less-privileged Nigerians having continually questioned the authenticity of the register, claiming that they have received no cash transfer to date, who then are the poor that have been beneficiaries of government’s intervention?</p>, <p>The Federal Government had made moves to take yet another loan of $800 million, (about N621,200,000,000), from the World Bank, with the intention of distributing it through the social register as part of palliatives aimed at cushioning the effect of subsidy removal.</p>, <p>Justifying the need to borrow the money, President Tinubu’s spokesman, Dele Alake, said: “The purpose of the facility is to expand coverage of shock response safety among the poor and vulnerable Nigerians. Twelve million poor h