President Bola Tinubu’s prompt response to the clamour over hunger and hardship, through the release of N570 billion naira to State Governments, is a potent short-term solution to ending the current high cost of living in Nigeria.
We acknowledge the President’s action as a continuation of his efforts to profer viable solutions, both in the short, medium and long term, towards ameliorating the effects of fuel subsidy removal since the inception of his administration on 29th of May 2023.
The disbursement of Nano funds for small businesses, suspension of import duties on food and pharmacitical items, conditional fund transfers to three million households, distribution of 20 trucks load of rice to all the states in the federation, and the recent directive to sell crude oil to Dangote and other local refineries in Naira will drastically reduce the rising cost of living in the country within the shortest possible time.
It is public knowledge that the TDF has repeatedly criticised the lackluster attitude of sub-national governments in complementing the developmental efforts of the Federal Government, and interventions from the President, to reduce the cost of living, which resulted from the inevitable economic reforms.
The cluster of far reaching interventions and actions by the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the last one year to stem the rising cost of living in the country would have impacted more positively on Nigerians, if State and Local Government administrators had emulated the President’s timely deployment of critical interventions to the people.
We want to emphatically state that the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999(As amended) did not give the Federal Government powers to oversight or supervise the activities of Sub-National Governments
We are, however, not happy that policies and interventions by President Tinubu to assuage current hardship, mostly channelled through the state governments, did not reach the intended beneficiaries at the grassroots. This perhaps explains why some uninformed masses were deceived to join the needless and unwarranted protest against the president.
The release of N570 billion to the 36 states of the federation by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is a timely short term intervention to address the immediate socio-economic needs of Nigerians, and to ease the unintended pains brought upon them by the removal of fuel subsidy.
We equally acknowledge that at no time in recent history was so much money and efforts committed to cushioning the biting effects of economic hardship on Nigerians, like it was done in the last one year by the Tinubu administration.
Massive investments in Railways, Coastal Superhighways, CNG Vehicles and technologies, Digital Economy through the 3MTT program, Agricultural Mechanization and production, Student Loans, and the unprecedented Fiscal Autonomy for the 774 Local Governments, are revolutionary strides that will permanently eradicate poverty in the country. And set Nigerians on the path of prosperity and economic abundance.
The challenges of a symbiotic working relationship between the Federal Government and the Sub-Nationals largely accounted for the inability of Nigerians to access and benefit from the multiple Federal Government economic interventions that were intentionally meant to cushion the painful effects of economic reforms.
Regardless of our understanding on why President Bola Tinubu channeled his multiple economic interventions through the state governments, we want to admonish the administration to see the recent protest by the largely uninformed masses, as a clarion call to devise its own channels to directly reach the teeming populace of the country with future economic aids and support, without involving the sub-national governments.
We believe that this innovation will help people access direct federal government interventions with ease, and also, it will encourage the Sub-Nationals to deploy their own interventions from the funds allocated to them by FAAC.
Finally, we commend the president for his timely national address to the protesters. The inclusion of the release of N570 billion to states for further intervention, and the earmarking of over N600 billion for direct federal intervention in his speech, are intentional and gratifying and must be commended.
We urge the protesters to suspend any further street action against the government. As their demands are evidently addressed by the President even long before they wrongly took to the streets.
They must not allow themselves to be used as willing tools in the hands of those who want to destroy Nigeria and its collective future.
