COVID-19 palliatives: ‘There’ll be social upheaval’ – Jonathan’s ex-aide, Omokri warns Buhari

Reno Omokri, a former aide to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, has warned of upheaval in the country if things continue the way they are at the moment.

Omokri added his voice to the popular claim that the government’s cash transfer to the ‘poorest of the poor’ in the country is lopsided.

Since the government began the conditional cash transfers due the Coronavirus lockdown, many Nigerians have cried out that the money has been majorly distributed in the North.

And Omokri, in a tweet on Sunday night, claimed that only twelve percent of the cash had gone to the entire South, while eighty-eight percent remained in the North.

Giving the warning, he also noted that the Coronavirus lockdown is more enforced in the South than in the North.

“General @MBuhari continues to focus 88% of his so called Conditional Cash Transfer in Northern Nigeria, and only 12% in the entire South, there may eventually be social upheaval in the South, where the #Coronavirus lockdown is more enforced than in the North,” he tweeted.

Recall that the Federal Government had a week ago said it has commenced payment of N20, 000 each to five thousand beneficiaries of its Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programme in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

Following the development the leadership of the National Assembly insisted on transparency, saying no intimidation from any quarters would dissuade them from stating the obvious.

The Igbo Renaissance Forum had also called out the President Muhammadu Buhari government over the disbursement method of the stimulus cash to the ‘poorest in the society’, and alleged exclusion of the South East,

Coalition of United Political Parties, CUPP also condemned the method of sharing the palliative measures to some Nigerians, describing the Federal Government’s decision to share stipends to a few people as palliative as a “joke, child’s play, orchestrated window dressing, a political trick and a bogus attempt to loot scarce resources in these very trying times.”