African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar has questioned the arithmetic behind the Federal Government’s claim that more than N600 billion has been disbursed through its cash transfer programme to vulnerable households.
Atiku, in a statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, on Thursday in Abuja, said the figures released by the government appeared inconsistent with its stated payment structure.
According to him, Nigerians were informed that qualifying households would receive N25,000 monthly for three months, amounting to N75,000 per household.
He argued that if 10 million households received the full payment, the total would amount to about N750 billion, while 15 million households receiving all three tranches would exceed N1.1 trillion.
Atiku therefore questioned how the government arrived at its reported expenditure of just over N600 billion.
He asked the government to clarify how many beneficiaries received one, two or all three tranches, as well as the number of failed or reversed transactions.
He also questioned whether all names on the government’s social register represented households that actually received payments.
“A name on a social register is not a bank alert. Counting people in a database is not the same thing as proving money reached them,” Atiku said.
The former vice president also raised concerns over what he described as conflicting figures on the number of households reached by the programme.
He noted that the Presidency announced on July 16, 2026, that expanded cash transfers had reached 15 million vulnerable households and repeated a similar figure on August 2.
However, Atiku pointed to a statement by the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs on August 26, 2026, indicating that slightly more than 10 million households had been reached.
“So where did five million households go? These are not opposition figures. They are Tinubu’s figures contradicting Tinubu’s figures,” he said.
Atiku further criticised the administration’s economic policies, arguing that rising fuel, transportation, food, medicine, energy and logistics costs had weakened household purchasing power and increased financial pressure on Nigerians.
He said the government should focus on reducing the economic pressures driving Nigerians into poverty rather than relying heavily on cash transfers and other palliatives.
Atiku reiterated his proposal for a targeted and transparent intervention in the domestic petroleum value chain, which he said would help reduce fuel and transportation costs and ease pressure across the economy.
He called on the Federal Government to publish a comprehensive payment trail if it indeed disbursed more than N600 billion.
According to him, the records should include verified beneficiary households, payment tranches, state-by-state disbursements, failed transactions, reversals and an independent audit.
Atiku maintained that until the government reconciles the figures and provides verifiable evidence of the payments, Nigerians would continue to question the discrepancy in the number of households reportedly reached by the programme.
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