YMonitor issue 61: PalliaTHIEVES

Asides from having high emotional intelligence in being able to create solid relationship & build a galvanising rapport for yourself, another top skill for office-holders is the highly-rated ability to siphon money.

Which in simple terms is the ability to create a system of re-directing money established for a particular purpose, for an existing problem to the already-heavily-loaded pockets of an office-holder. It’s quite similar to the process undergraduates use to “re-direct” funds from buying handouts to shawarma, pizza & Coldstone ice cream, hides-face.

The FG said it would be feeding school children in their homes amid the Covid-19 pandemic, a curious feeding programme called Take Home Rations (THR), which the ministry has defended as the Covid-19 version of the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme. It will cost the federal government about N697 million daily to sustain this school feeding programme.

Rather, these unavailable funds are channelled to more pressing and measurable Covid-19 response. Also, we have been here before, indeed, considering the outcry that attended the sharing of related palliatives meant for communities, which only benefited middlemen and influential stakeholders at the expense of the vulnerable people, most Nigerians have no confidence that anything will be different with this controversial scheme.

Should it be shelved?