The recent take of Kingsley Muoghalu, a presidential aspirant of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in which he opined that N5,000 a month (current monthly payment, to 1.6 million Nigerian households through Nigeria’s Conditional Cash Transfer programme – one of the programme the under the National Social Investment Programme) can not make a difference in people’s lives. The statement credited to him has generated a lot of furore about the Federal government policy.
Muoghalu reeks of a sad ignorance of the reality by politicians about the extreme poverty that majority of people in our rural areas experience. Doing so is denying the fact of poverty gap between the rich and poor in present day Nigeria. It again brought to the fore the naivety and dissonant to society issues displayed by any would be political aspirants during previous electioneering. Muoghalu dismissive stance about the amount shows how elitist our politicians can be. Muoghalu is far from reality and the conditions of people he wants to serve; Too many people sadly have a very limited understanding of the realities of Nigeria, but don’t even realize it.
A lot of folks who live in Lagos and Abuja live in a bubble. If you go to rural areas you will see first hand generational poverty. Even in Lagos and Abuja, poverty still exists, Maroko is enough for an example.
Though, one might attempt to agree how on meagre the cash is but the impact of such cash can not be totally discredited especially for those living in the core rural communities who are the beneficiaries. Saying N5,000 cannot make a difference in people’s lives is an elitist statement. I have seen instances where and when you give some individuals just a meagre N2,000 and load of hidden elations appearing from their faces because they have never seen such amount. You can now imagine the miracle the N5,000 will do for such category of individuals, it goes a long way to changes their status.
I am not holding brief for the government, but saying 5,000 cannot make a difference in people’s lives especially those lives in the deepest rural communities can best be said to be an elitist statement. Anybody who has a chance to be in those communities can attest to that fact. The programme is meant for the poorest of the poorest Nigerians, these are not people on Twitter, Facebook or any other social media platforms. Most of them are rural poor and you can only have knowledge of where the shoes pinch them to understand the impact of such money.
If you hear the stories of the things they are able to do with these N5,000 monthly payments, you would be amazed. There is a proverb in Yoruba that goes thus,
“what is after six is much more than seven”.
