Nigerian Labour Congress President Joe Ajero has pointed out that the Federal Government’s promised N5bn palliative package per state will not equal to N1500 per person when distributed among the country’s approximately 133 million people who live in multi-dimensional poverty.
Ajero made this claim public on Friday during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today show. He argued that N185 billion would not go very far if distributed among the 133 million Nigerians who are multi-dimensionally poor, a number he obtained from the National Bureau of Statistics.
The head of the labor union claimed that even if the money were equivalent to six trailers’ worth of rice, it would not be enough to feed the population if everyone chipped in a single cup.
He continued by saying that more Nigerians had fallen below the poverty line from the initial increase in the price of petroleum and up until the most recent increase.
“Let us assume that it is a palliative and not a loan, you will agree that it is difficult to feel the impact of such an amount at a time like this when the Bureau of Statistics has come up to say that over 133 million Nigerians are multi-dimensionally poor.
“You start to wonder about the impact of N185bn to 133 million people by their admittance, who are multi-dimensionally poor.
“In fact from the first increase in pump price of petrol and the last one, a lot of people moved from the borderline to a very high level of poverty. If you calculate and do an arithmetic on that, you will discover that it won’t amount to N1500 per person and you ask if that’s the impact that we want to achieve,” he said.
