Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has raised concerns over the Tinubu administration’s cash transfer programme.
This is even as he has called for an independent audit of the over ₦600 billion disbursed and demanding clarification on what he described as discrepancies in the government’s beneficiary figures.
Atiku, in a statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, questioned the administration’s handling of the social investment scheme, pointing to what he said were contradictions in official data released by the Presidency and the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs.
According to Atiku, the Presidency announced on 16 July and again on 2 August 2026 that 15 million vulnerable households had been reached through the expanded cash transfer programme. However, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs recently stated that only “slightly over 10 million households” had benefited.
“So where did five million households go?” Atiku asked. “These are not opposition figures. They are Tinubu’s figures contradicting Tinubu’s figures.”
The former vice president also questioned the arithmetic behind the disbursement. With qualifying households expected to receive ₦25,000 monthly for three months, totalling ₦75,000 per household, he noted that 10 million households would require approximately ₦750 billion, while 15 million would exceed ₦1.1 trillion. Yet the government claims to have spent just over ₦600 billion.
“How many received one tranche, two tranches or all three? How many payments failed or were reversed? How many names were merely lifted from an existing social register and presented as evidence of actual payment?” Atiku queried. “A name on a social register is not a bank alert. Counting people in a database is not the same thing as proving money reached them.”
Beyond the figures, Atiku expressed concern over what he described as the administration’s approach to poverty alleviation, arguing that the government should be focused on reducing the number of people requiring palliatives rather than celebrating how many millions have become vulnerable.
He contrasted the current approach with his own proposal for intervention in the domestic petroleum value chain, which he said would reduce fuel and transportation costs at source.
“When petrol becomes cheaper, the bus driver spends less, the farmer moves produce more cheaply, the trader pays less for haulage, businesses face lower logistics costs and the savings travel through the economy to the family kitchen,” Atiku explained. “Tinubu waits until poverty enters the home and arrives with a cash-transfer form. Atiku wants to reduce the cost pressures that drove the family into poverty in the first place.”
The former vice president called on the government to provide a verifiable payment trail, including unique verified households, payment tranches, state-by-state distribution, failed transactions, reversals, and an independent audit.
“The same government that demands every kobo of Atiku’s proposed intervention cannot ask Nigerians to accept its own hundreds of billions on faith,” he said.
Atiku concluded that until the Tinubu administration reconciles its figures and produces a verifiable payment trail, Nigerians are entitled to ask: “where did the five million households disappear to? Did they graduate from poverty, vanish from the social register, or simply disappear because government propaganda ran ahead of the truth?”
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