Much has been said about Buharinomocs since May 29, 2015, but Nigerians are now taking issue with the Buhari administration’s favouritism to Northern Nigeria in its Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) policy.
The CCT programme is domiciled under the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management & Social Development.
According to data from the National Cash Transfer Office which was sourced and analysed by the Abuja-based International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR), over 82.5% of the conditional cash transfers made in this country went to the North West, North East and North Central zones of the country.
A breakdown of the data by geopolitical zone showed that the North-West had 112,744 beneficiaries, North-Central had 88,008, North-East had 44,405, South-West had 39,134, South-South had 10,429, and the South-East a paltry 3,253.
While Jigawa State (North-West) with a population of 5.8 million had 42,558 beneficiaries, Enugu State (South-East) with a population of 4.4 million had virtually no beneficiaries.
President Muhammadu Buhari’s home state, Katsina (North-West) with a population of 4.9 million had 41,243 beneficiaries while Anambra State (South-East) with 5.5 million people had 3,253 beneficiaries.
See full data list of benefiting states below:
The Special Adviser to the President on Social Investments, Maryam Uwais had in a 2018 interview outlined how beneficiaries were selected.
She disclosed that the beneficiaries were selected via a community-based targeting model already in use by the World Bank in Nigeria.
“We developed a community-based targeting model for developing a social register. All our beneficiaries, the people that are paid are from that social register,” she said.
However, The Herald had reported how former Anambra State Governor, Dr Chukwuemeka Ezeife accused the Buhari administration of deliberately omitting the South-East from Federal Government programmes, saying he was preparing to go to court to challenge the trend.
Also, Oscar Onwudiwe, the President of Aka Ikenga, a body of Igbo Professionals, noted that Northern Nigeria was taking advantage of other Nigerians due to perceived larger population which is vigorously exploited during elections but hardly seen in terms of tax contribution, school enrolment, and number of professionals.
Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State also voiced his concerns about the programme, saying he was “not impressed” about the modalities for choosing the beneficiaries.
Some Nigerians, who took to social media to condemn the trend of favouring Northern Nigeria, wrote:
Let's assume they have truly disbursed money, look at how skewed it is.
Is Buhari running an apartheid against southern Nigeria ? pic.twitter.com/V4DqON31Ia
— Hamma (@HAHayatu) April 9, 2020
A picture, they say, says a thousand words; this one screams "Buhari is a ethnoreligious racist bigot"
82.1% of Conditional Cash Transfer are from Northern Nigeria, while the South West & rest of us 5%ters share the remnants (17.9%)
This is Buhari's ONE NIGERIA.
Thank you BAT! pic.twitter.com/yXs45vq1kQ
— The Revolutionary Seeker (WAEC) (@The_Seeker76) April 9, 2020
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