By Sunday Bassey
The Centre for Human Rights and Accountability Network (CHRAN), has lauded President Bola Tinubu for declaring a state of emergency on food security in the country.
The human rights group said this in a statement signed by its Director, Mr Franklyn Isong and Deputy Director, Public Affairs, Mr Vincent Aluu, respectively and made available to newsmen in Uyo on Saturday.
The statement noted that it was a timely intervention, given the devastating effects of flooding, rising cost of farm inputs in the country.
It also commended the president for approving the immediate release of fertilisers and other farm inputs to help in boosting food security.
It however disagreed on the planned N500 bilion palliative to 12 million households to be placed on N8,000 stipend per month for a period of 6 months.
It wondered what the paltry sum of N267.00 per day would do to solve problems of Nigerian given the present low purchasing power and high inflationary trend.
“The pro-democracy group queried the method used by the Federal Government to determine the benefitting households.
“Insisting that the programme is another political settlement for the political class and the rich in the corridors of the government at the detriment of the poor masses,” he said.
It added that CHRAN noted that the inability of the Nigerian government to identify and properly track its citizens through a well-documented national register in spite of the proliferation of biometric identifications might render the programme a wasteful political venture.
It also noted that CHRAN faulted the allocation of a whooping N70 billion of the palliative fund to the National Assembly members under the guise of “supporting the working conditions of new members.
It urged the president to initiate people-centred and good welfare programmes that would reduce inflation, unemployment, create empowerment and capacity building through skill acquisition, saying these programmes would have direct bearing on the poor masses.
It called on the president to expedite action in privatising or outright sell of the nation’s refineries and to make policies favouring modular refineries as permanent solution to the fuel subsidy removal rather than coming up with temporary measures to service the interest of politicians. (NAN)
