The African Democratic Congress (ADC) says the Auditor-General’s finding that N33.75 billion in cash transfers to 3.29 million households cannot be verified is proof of what Nigerians have long suspected that under President Bola Tinubu, social investment has become a racket run for the benefit of officials, not the poor.

In a statement on Monday, ADC National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, said: “Let us call this what it is. Not mismanagement. Not an oversight. It is an organised racket, which this government has run under the guise of a social intervention programme. They are stealing from the poor and telling them to continue to endure hardship.”

The party recalled that at the beginning of the Tinubu administration, N585 million was reportedly wired to a private account under Betta Edu before she was caught.

It said another N44 billion went missing from the National Social Investment Programme Agency under Halima Shehu, before the latest report by the Auditor-General of the Federation that a sum of N33.75 billion cannot be matched to any verified beneficiary.

“At the time, the government made a show of suspending her. Now she is back in the President’s campaign council,” the statement said.

“This latest report of an unaccounted N33.75 billion intervention fund, buried inside a larger N78 billion fund, and the historical pattern of corruption that has trailed this kind of programme would suggest that this government has found a way to steal from the poor by turning the social intervention programme into a criminal enterprise.”

Abdullahi said instead of the Federal Government addressing the “wanton corruption” associated with such interventions in the past, it has announced an even bigger package of $1 billion without demonstrating that it has made any effort to ensure greater transparency and accountability.

“Barely weeks before this audit blew up in their faces, they wheeled out a new $1 billion so-called ‘Renewed Hope Social Protection Programme’ with the usual State House fanfare. Given the familiar history, we are in no doubt that even in the unlikely event that this latest intervention is ever implemented, it would end up like the others before it: another racket.”

While demanding a full probe into the scheme, the ADC noted that “interventions such as this became necessary because the APC government has made it impossible for people to earn a dignified living”.

“Their twin disastrous policies of fuel subsidy removal and currency devaluation have exploded the population of Nigerians living in extreme poverty and therefore needing cash handouts from the government, which has now become a mere pretext for stealing in the name of the poor.

“This is a government that manufactured hardship with one hand and pocketed the relief with the other. Fuel prices up. Transport costs up. Food prices up. And the one programme meant to soften the blow turns out to be a black hole. Enough is enough.”

The party, therefore, demanded the immediate publication of the full beneficiary register, the REMITA payment trail, and the names of every official who obstructed the Auditor-General. (Daily Trust)