President Bola Tinubu is engaging banks to disburse cash to impoverished Nigerians, forgoing the so-called poverty register used by ex-President Muhammadu Buhari in selecting beneficiaries of a N5000 monthly stipend, many of whom cannot be traced. 

To soften the blow the removal of fuel subsidy has dealt millions of Nigerians, Mr Tinubu, in a live broadcast on Monday evening, announced cash would be doled out to the masses and that the banks, unlike in the previous regime, would be in charge of verifying the eligibility of beneficiaries before distribution.

“In this regard, the expertise of Development Finance Institutions, commercial banks and microfinance banks will be tapped into to develop a viable and an appropriate transaction structure for all stakeholders,” Mr Tinubu said in the Monday broadcast.

Although Mr Tinubu was elected on the same platform — All Progressives Congress (APC) — as Mr Buhari, he has made decisions in his first two months in office that demonstrate how different their approaches to governance are.

Sadiya Umar Farouq, former minister of humanitarian affairs, in 2020 said Nigerians who purchased N100 call airtime and had less than N5000 in their accounts were those the government considered poor and eligible for the stipend.

She claimed approximately 15 million “lives were touched” and benefited from various programmes like TraderMoni, MarketMoni, Farmer Moni, and N-Power scheme even though several reports by the World Bank showed that millions of Nigerians were living in abject poverty because of Mr Buhari’s dangerous poverty-coping mechanisms.

But Mr Tinubu, wanting no part in the failures of his predecessor, is taking a different turn by assigning financial institutions the task of identifying who and who was not qualified to receive the cash in a move that boldly implies he does not think the so-called poverty register by Mr Buhari and former Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo’s regime served any purpose.

That Mr Tinubu is not relying on Mr Buhari’s poverty register to continue giving out cash suggests he does not believe the beneficiaries were genuine.