SO MUCH ADO ABOUT N8000!

By

JESUTEGA ONOKPASA

In the wake of the announcement that the President Bola Tinubu administration will be paying 12 million Nigerians N8,000 a month for succour against rising cost of living, all manner of rather quite ill-informed commentators have been spewing forth all manner of patently ill-advised criticism of what is actually a most commendable initiative.

For instance, a certain Ezekiel Nya-Etok, a man who couldn’t win governorship election in his ward not to talk of his local government area, thought himself in a position to lecture a man who won the Presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on how best to cater for the Nigerian people and deliver on his mandate!

He even had the effrontery to ask President Tinubu not to extend the palliatives to Akwa-Ibom State but to, instead misappropriate it toward some bogus project he is apparently interested in!

If I may ask, who is Nya-Etok to negotiate for Akwa-Ibom State when he is not its Governor, and, who is he to speak for the poor people of the state when he’s not a poor man?

Some other fellow even came up with the utterly absurd idea that President Bola Tinubu should rather use the money to buy busses to ply the roads of our country as if the National Union of Road Transport Workers had told him there is a shortage of busses in Nigeria!

Go to any motor-park in this country – the “Agberos” are there desperately canvassing passengers.

Apparently because someone wants to be awarded a contract to make humongous sums of money by dumping utter crap in the name of mass transit buses on us, Bola Tinubu’s heartfelt concern for the poor must be condemned so they can smile to the banks.

Similarly, a certain Ambassador Joe Keshi, self-described as a public affairs commentator, when he is actually a very well-known supporter of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, went on air and proceeded to cry like a baby and throw tantrums like a toddler, while pretending he was criticizing the program when he was actually only bitterly lamenting the loss of his preferred candidates in the presidential election!

Funny enough, all those I know who have criticised the program clearly don’t need N8,000 a month, and it is not their place to decide for those who do.

Come to think of it, why is the fact that government can develop the country, boost the economy, create employment etc and at the same time also give palliatives to the poorest of the poor simply not sinking in?

Have any of those pouring scorn on this particular program even bothered to ask a single ACTUALLY indigent person what N8,000 a month could do for them?

I certainly do not even remotely suggest that President Tinubu has a monopoly of wisdom or is above assistance, vide suggestion and advice.

But I must insist that he thoroughly thought through this cash transfer program before coming up with it, wherefore, I must commensurately take extreme exception to any suggestions to the contrary.

That said, none of those criticizing the program have as much as nearly addressed any of the issues that truly matter.

Are the provision of palliatives to the poor and the execution of any of the projects being bandied about as alternatives actually mutually exclusive and cannot possibly be implemented side by side?

Have those pushing the, quite frankly, utterly unfounded notion that it must be either one or the other, even bothered to engage those Bola Tinubu intends the N8,000 for (a category of Nigerians that neither my humble self nor anyone of the critics, for that matter, belongs to) whether or not they could do with the assistance?

In any case, how are the likes of Nya-Etok, Joe Keshi and their ilk in any position to negotiate on behalf of the poor, much less have the temerity to reject the palliatives on behalf of a category of people they do not even belong to, in the first place?

Why are elitist Nigerians so adamant to shave the heads of their less privileged compatriots in their absence?

For God’s sake we have a President and our President is Asiwaju Bola Tinubu – he is the one with a mandate.

He grew up helping his mother to sell stuff in the market.

He went to America where he qualified as a First Class accountant.

He worked as treasurer for an international oil company.

He has seen it all.

Unlike those who live in Dubai but want to rule in Nigeria or those who never give “shishi” but have been collecting way more than “shishi” from gullible supporters under the guise of “reclaiming” a nonexistent mandate they are actually only aiming to steal, President Tinubu knows his duties as President and knows that he can set our country on a path of irreversible progress without throwing the poorest of the poor and weakest of the weak under the bus.

Onokpasa, a lawyer, was a member of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Presidential Campaign Council and writes from Abuja.