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By Emmanuel Adeleke
Senator Dino Melaye has urged Nigerians to reject the proposed N5000 transportation grant after removal of fuel subsidy in 2022.
Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, had on Wednesday said Nigeria will remove fuel subsidy in 2022 and replace it with N5000 a month transportation grant to 40 million poorest Nigerians.
But Melaye, who represented Kogi West Senatorial District in the 8th National Assembly, in a video posted on his Facebook page, described the plan as hypocrisy of government and means to “siphon common patrimony.”
He urged the current administration to look for more innovative, intellectually mobile strategies of taking the country out of the woods.
According to him, the amount spent annually on fuel subsidy is N1.8 trillion, noting that with FG’s plan of paying N5000 to 40 million vulnerable Nigerians, the amount will go up to N2.4 trillion annually.
“You want to rescue the country by removing subsidy because you are spending too much, but you want to replace N1.8 trillion with N2.4 trillion, then where are we going as a nation?
“This is just a typical interpretation that the government has lost its sense of direction and there are no intellectual mobility; they are intellectually stagnant and cannot devise other strategic economic means of reviving our economy and creating employments and taking us out of the doldrums,” Melaye said.
He noted that the money would be siphoned because there is no data to carry out the exercise, stressing that there is no legitimate means of reaching 40 million Nigerians.
Melaye said the burden will be on the masses in the end.