COVID-19: Shehu Sani Knocks Buhari Over ‘N5,000 Account Balance’ Criteria For Cash Transfer

Shehu Sani

A former Kaduna lawmaker, Shehu Sani has slammed the President Muhammadu Buhari’s government over the style it adopted to identify beneficiaries of the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) scheme.

This comes after the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Sadiya Umar had disclosed that Nigerians who buy N100 call credit are considered as poor and are among those qualified to get palliatives.

According to her, those with account balance of N5,000 or less will be among the beneficiaries of the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) scheme.

Farouq explained that aside the National Social Register, Bank Verification Numbers (BVN), record of purchase of airtime by mobile phone owners was part of the yardsticks.

Reacting, Sani condemned the method by the federal government while making reference to minimum wage of N30,000.

On his Twitter page, Sani wrote: “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.

He further called on security agencies to be more lenient on enforcing lockdown orders in states.

“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,” his tweet added.