More than 10 million Nigerians who benefited from the Federal Government’s conditional cash transfer programme are not on social media, according to Nentawe Yilwatda, national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Yilwatda made the disclosure on Saturday after a three-day retreat of the APC National Executive Council in Maiduguri, Borno State.
He said many of the beneficiaries, whom he described as poor and vulnerable Nigerians, do not have mobile phones or access to television, limiting their ability to participate in public discussions about government interventions.
The APC chairman said the Tinubu administration used savings from the removal of the petrol subsidy to fund the cash transfer programme, under which beneficiaries received N75,000 each.
“We have given 75,000 naira to over 10 million Nigerians across the country using the conditional cash transfer under the ministry of humanitarian affairs and poverty reduction,” Punch quoted him as saying.
“Mind you, these people who are poor and vulnerable don’t have telephone to make call, they are not on social media. They don’t have television. They cannot come and challenge and discuss as we are doing here, but they are out there.”
Yilwatda also pointed to road construction and student loans as other interventions by the Federal Government.
“We are constructing roads and paying people who are working on the road site and construction is going across the country,” he said.
The Federal Government has separately described its current cash-transfer initiatives as programmes targeting vulnerable households, with some beneficiaries receiving a total of N75,000 in instalments.
The comments came as the APC reviewed its structures and activities at national, state, local government, ward and polling-unit levels during the Maiduguri retreat.
