Attorney General Abubakar Malami on Saturday flagged off the payment of N3.2 billion to over 5,000 citizens of Kebbi State.

A total of 5,889 people across the 21 local government areas of Kebbi will receive N550,000 each from the Federal Government’s COVID-19 Targeted Credit Facility Loan.

Mr Malami, whose brief as the justice minister does not include administering government’s social intervention programmes, said the facility was part of his gesture to pay the people back for making him their representative at the federal cabinet.

“It is at the instance of the state government that I was appointed Minister, which paved the way for me to make meaningful contributions to my country and my community,” Mr Malami, rumoured to be warming up for Kebbi governorship in 2023, said at the inauguration which also commemorates the 30th anniversary of the state’s creation.

The minister said he has been holding meetings with Kebbi indigenes holding top executive positions in the Buhari regime on the best way to channel federal opportunities to their people.

He said he has also “actively engaged and worked with some federal officers from the state to establish Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs).”

The minister revealed some of the accomplishments of his NGO, Kadi Malami Foundation, which he said has facilitated loans to over 2,000 farmers under the CBN’s Anchor Borrowers Scheme.

Further highlighting how he has used his position as a federal minister to curry support for his base, Mr Malami confessed that his NGOs “secure loans, ranging from one N1 million to N5 million each to indigenes of the state.

“This is in addition to several donations that were channeled to those severely affected by the Kebbi flooding, boat mishap and other natural disasters, as well as facilitation of the nomination and payment of the much-needed Survival Fund to the needy in the state,” Mr Malami added.

The President Muhammadu Buhari regime, of which Mr Malami is seen as a pivotal figure, has repeatedly been accused of nepotism and sectional favouritism.

The U.S., in its 2020 report on human rights practices in Nigeria, had accused the Buhari regime of overarching favouritism in handing out important federal positions to “a particular ethnic group” to which it holds traditional allegiance.

Peoples Gazette had also exclusively reported how Nigeria’s secret police, SSS, under Mr Buhari, surreptitiously recruited 535 new intakes of northern extraction as against 93 from the entire South.

Many national voices, including Bishop Kukah, Professor Wole Soyinka and Senator Eyinnaya Abaribe had also warned that the nepotism of the Buhari regime could hurt national cohesion.