Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has challenged President Bola Tinubu’s administration to reconcile conflicting figures on the number of households reached under its expanded cash-transfer programme.
Atiku said the contradiction between the government’s earlier claim that 15m vulnerable households had been reached and a more recent figure of “slightly over 10m households” raised serious questions about the programme’s implementation and the government’s management of public funds.
In a statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, on Thursday, the African Democratic Congress presidential candidate asked the Federal Government to explain what happened to the five million households missing from the latest figure.
“On July 16, 2026, the presidency officially declared that expanded cash transfers had reached 15m vulnerable households. It repeated essentially the same figure on August 2, 2026. Yet on August 26, 2026, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs suddenly told Nigerians that only ‘slightly over 10m 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,” the statement read in part.
Atiku called on the Federal Government to publish detailed records of the payments, including verified beneficiary households, payment tranches, state-by-state distribution figures, failed transactions and reversals.
“If ₦600bn truly moved, then government must show the trail: unique verified households, payment tranches, state-by-state distribution, failed transactions, reversals and an independent audit,” he said.
The former vice president’s criticism comes against the backdrop of the Federal Government’s expanded social protection measures, which the Tinubu administration has presented as part of its response to the rising cost of living and the economic difficulties confronting vulnerable households.
The cash-transfer programme was expanded following the removal of the petrol subsidy and the resulting increase in transportation, food and other household costs.
The government has repeatedly argued that targeted social interventions are necessary to cushion the effects of economic reforms on poor and vulnerable Nigerians.
Atiku, however, said government should focus more on reducing the underlying cost pressures driving households into poverty than on expanding the number of people receiving palliatives.
“Beyond the arithmetic lies a bigger indictment. A government boasting that tens of millions of households require emergency cash transfers should not be congratulating itself. It should be explaining why its economic policies pushed so many people into desperation,” he added.
He accused the government of worsening the financial pressure on households through higher fuel, transport, food and energy costs.
“Tinubu has turned poverty into a government programme: make fuel expensive, transport rises; transport rises, food rises; food rises, medicine becomes expensive; the family basket shrinks,” Atiku said.
He added that businesses were also facing higher energy and logistics costs, while workers had lost purchasing power. “When millions become poorer, government registers them as ‘vulnerable,’ gives some of them cash and calls it reform. That is not prosperity. It is the industrial production of poverty followed by the bureaucratic management of the poor,” he argued.
The ADC chieftain contrasted the administration’s cash-transfer strategy with his proposed approach to reducing the cost of living, particularly through intervention in the domestic petroleum value chain.
He said his proposed policy would involve a targeted, capped and transparent intervention designed to lower fuel and transportation costs at source. “This is precisely why Atiku proposes a targeted, capped and transparent intervention in the domestic petroleum value chain. It is designed to reduce fuel and transportation costs at source,” he said.
According to him, reducing fuel costs would have a wider impact across the economy by lowering transportation and logistics expenses for farmers, traders, manufacturers and households. “When petrol becomes cheaper, the bus driver spends less, the farmer moves produce more cheaply, the trader pays less for haulage, businesses face lower logistics costs and the savings travel through the economy to the family kitchen,” he said.
He argued that the difference between his proposal and the Tinubu administration’s approach was that his plan would seek to tackle the causes of rising household expenses rather than compensate people after the damage had been done.
“Tinubu waits until poverty enters the home and arrives with a cash-transfer form. Atiku wants to reduce the cost pressures that drove the family into poverty in the first place,” he said.
The former vice president said a credible anti-poverty programme should ultimately reduce the number of people dependent on government assistance rather than expand the pool of beneficiaries. “A serious anti-poverty policy should reduce the number of people needing palliatives, not celebrate how many millions have become vulnerable,” he said.
He also accused the Federal Government of applying a different standard of accountability to opposition proposals and its own expenditure.
“The same government that demands every kobo of Atiku’s proposed intervention cannot ask Nigerians to accept its own hundreds of billions on faith. That is not accountability. It is hypocrisy armed with a calculator,” Atiku said.
He called on the government to reconcile the conflicting beneficiary figures and provide verifiable evidence of the payments made.
“Until the Tinubu administration reconciles these figures and produces a verifiable payment trail, Nigerians are entitled to keep asking: where did the five million households disappear to? Did they graduate from poverty, vanish from the social register, or simply disappear because government propaganda ran ahead of the truth?” he asked.
