IF there’s one thing Nigerians seem to be clear on about the proposed measure to ease the immediate harsh effect of the fuel subsidy removal, it is that they are not interested in the conditional cash transfer scheme. Under this plan, the Federal Government is to transfer N8,000 over a six months period to poor Nigerians or low income-earning households, the so called poorest of the poor.

It is a palliative measure that comes directly from the passage of the bill that amended the 2022 supplementary budget after the Federal Government had secured a World Bank loan of $800 million. It is from this loan that the government would source the N500 billion that will constitute the pool from which poor Nigerians would have their accounts directly credited with N8,000. This, it is expected, would help them tide over the worsening effect of the removal of the subsidy on fuel on May 29, 2023.

As was the case with the removal of the subsidy on fuel, this latest proposal was not an original idea of the Bola Tinubu administration. The palliative measure was first proposed by the Muhammadu Buhari administration ahead of the planned removal of oil subsidy. While the administration was able to push the bill through the lower house of the 9th National Assembly, in the eleventh hour of President Buhari’s time as president, it didn’t have enough time to get it through the Senate. Nigerians would remember their sense of outrage about the government’s action then. They thought it was yet another attempt at drawing Nigeria further into the bind of debt peonage.

The feeling then was that the Buhari administration could leave such proposal to the next government that was due to take over from it in a short while. Even though the departing administration was very keen on pushing this bill through the National Assembly, a mere window dressing that saw it working up to a few hours before the inauguration of the Bola Tinubu administration, it was not eager to give effect to its proposed removal of the subsidy on fuel. That was the dirty job Tinubu was left to execute. This took the bottom out of Garba Shehu’s claim that his then principal, President Buhari, did Bola Tinubu a favour by not yanking off the subsidy on fuel when he had all the time in the world to do that. Otherwise, said Shehu, Tinubu would have lost the election that brought him into office.

The whole point of this then is that, the Tinubu administration is only following up on and executing an approved proposal of its predecessor that was obviously intended for the good of Nigerians. If not for anything else then, the fact that the World Bank loan was to ameliorate in the immediate the unsavoury outcome of subsidy removal, may be enough justification for Tinubu to want to see it through. Isn’t this what Nigerians mean when they talk of government being a continuum? But we should still ask if Tinubu needs to swallow every bitter pill Buhari left for him including one as potentially counterproductive as the one on cash transfer?

Providing cash transfer as palliatives to Nigerians is a well-beaten path Nigerians are not treading for the first time. They have very unhappy tales to tell about this. Thus, the present proposal comes across to them as a poisoned chalice in view of their past experience. As pointed out above, it was the Buhari administration that originated the idea of a World Bank loan that would be used to provide palliatives in the event of the removal of fuel subsidy. All the Tinubu administration has done is to tinker with the details of that plan.

In its original conception, the Buhari government made arrangements for only 10 million Nigerians to benefit from the palliatives. And rather than N8,000 that the Tinubu administration intends to pay Nigerians, the Buhari administration made provision for just N5,000 per person or household. That administration’s social empowerment programmes such as Market Moni, Trader Moni and Farmer Moni that were anchored by the office of the former Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, provided the template for the proposed cash transfers. The main difference between that and this is that funds given under the social investment programmes of Buhari were repayable loans whereas the present cash transfers in question are “gifts”.

But the bitter experience of how a previous palliative regime was both poorly and criminally managed has taught Nigerians not to believe in schemes like this. Street wisdom tells us that experience is the best teacher. This is an advisory that is now part of everyday parlance. Are Nigerians now to disbelieve the evidence of their eyes? They’ve been badly bitten once. Is there any crime in being shy a second time around? Those prone to periodic amnesia would be reminded that about this time three years ago, Nigeria like the rest of the world was in the throes of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic when we were grounded by a medical lockdown. All economic and commercial activities came to a grinding halt. The effects were at once very immediate and severe in the extreme aside the morbid fear many nursed of contracting the rampaging pandemic.

It was under these circumstances that the Buhari administration came up with the idea of offering palliatives to the people to assuage their plight. Billions of tax payers’ money was expended on the so-called palliatives by both the Federal and state governments under the overall superintendence of Sadiya Umar Farooq, the Humanitarian Affairs Minister. Corporate organisations, groups and individuals felt called upon to act and everyone gave from the generosity of their hearts. Alongside this, the Federal Government in Abuja went ahead with a so-called home feeding scheme for school children at a time they were all home. Registers were opened across neighbourhoods, towns and states. But for the most part, Nigerians only heard of these palliatives but saw nothing of them.

It wasn’t until the #EndSARS protests of October 2020 by young Nigerians in reaction to the state’s anti-people activities that the whole world got to know the sham that was the palliatives scheme. They invaded and laid bare warehouses where foods and goods meant to be distributed to Nigerians were kept by criminal politicians and public servants. It’s true that Nigerians can use some help right now, call it palliatives or whatever. But they would as likely as not only hear of these palliatives but never get to enjoy them. Beyond this, the idea seems not well thought through. It amounts to no more than subsiding consumption where the government should be investing in infrastructure.

For how long can an individual, much less a family, sustain themselves on N8,000 today?