The former Senator representing Kaduna Central, Shehu Sani has condemned the criteria adopted by President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to identify beneficiaries of the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) scheme.
It will be recalled the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Sadiya Umar Farouq had announced that Nigerians with N5,000 or less in their bank accounts and those who buy N100 call credit will benefit from the coronavirus lockdown palliatives from the government in terms of cash transfers.
She said people in such categories are considered poor and will be added to the expanded National Social Register to benefit from government palliatives.
However, Sani noted that in a country that pays N30,000 as minimum wage, the decision to only pay those with less than N5,000 during the lockdown period is illogical and irrational.
“In a country where the minimum wage is officially 30k;to deny a citizen 5k because he has 5k in his account under lockdown with no end in sight is illogical and irrational.
“The Poor can be accused of many things, but the poor did not ‘import’ #COVID-19 into our country; Stop killing or convicting them over lockdown violations.
“There should be a more civilized and lenient way of ‘punishing the innocent,” he wrote on Twitter.
