Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar lacks the requisite pro-poor reasoning and thus cannot appreciate efforts at alleviating poverty through programmes that empower small-scale traders, like the Trader Moni Scheme, the Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) has said.
The group’s Chairman Niyi Akinsiju and Secretary Cassidy Madueke, were responding to Atiku’s claim in his petition at the Presidential Election Tribunal that the TraderMoni programme amounted to vote-buying and lacked budgetary backing.
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The statement said: “Atiku’s contempt for the poor renders him incapable of understanding and appreciating the Buhari government’s policies and programmes aimed at making their lives better. It is not surprising, as Mr Abubakar spent the better part of his tenure as Vice-President making the lives of Nigerians miserable. As Vice-President, he established his private university, which no average Nigerian can afford, and at a time lecturers in public universities were on strike.
“Perhaps this despise has only worsened with the fact that the Nigerian masses overwhelmingly voted against him and his anti-poor policies in the recently concluded election while voting for President Muhammadu Buhari, a man who stands with and for them.”
It added: “The TraderMoni programmes are soft loans to small scale traders, who are expected to pay back. The N10,000 is meant to provide extra capital for these small scale traders to expand their small businesses, buy more goods to sell, and then pay back within six months. After repaying this N10,000, they are entitled to N15,000, which when repaid, makes them eligible for N20,000, then N30,000, up to N100,000.
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“Government, over time, had concentrated efforts and policies on the welfare of the elite – the minority, who are already well to do – while neglecting the majority, poor Nigerians, by not creating policies that empower them directly and indirectly.
“The Buhari administration believes that the welfare of the poor is as important as that of the elite and thus they must be catered for as well.”
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