Nigeria Government’s condition for N5,000 palliative is illogical, says Shehu Sani

Former Nigerian Senator Shehu Sani on Friday opposed the conditions given by the Nigerian Government for citizens to benefit from its lockdown palliative measures.

The government gave three criteria for vulnerable Nigerians to receive the N5,000 relief fund to ease the hardship caused by the lockdown to contain further spread of coronavirus.

Nigeria’s humanitarian affairs, disaster management and social development minister Sadiya Farouq said only families that qualify as poor people will get the palliative measure.

“These are people who depend on the informal sector to earn their livelihood; they are daily wage earners and these are the people that we are really going to focus on more as well as people living with disabilities,” Farouq said.

“We are also using the mobile networks, to know people that top up the credit units for their phones with maybe N100 or less.

“We are also going to focus on the urban poor as I mentioned by using their verified BVN accounts to get them, that is, people that have an account balance of N5, 000 and below. We are going to use the national social register that we already have.”

However, the former Senator, believes the conditions are “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,” Sani said.