Former Vice President and African Democratic Congress presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has challenged the Federal Government to explain discrepancies surrounding its reported N600 billion expenditure on cash transfers to vulnerable households.
Atiku raised the concerns in a statement issued by his media team on Thursday, following conflicting figures from the Presidency and the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Bernard Doro, on the number of households that have benefited from the programme.
The Presidency had announced on July 16 and August 2, 2026, that the expanded cash transfer programme under President Bola Tinubu had reached 15 million vulnerable households.
However, Doro reportedly told Nigerians on August 26 that the programme had reached only “slightly over 10 million households.”
The conflicting figures prompted Atiku to question what happened to the difference of about five million households and called on the administration to publish details of those who received the payments.
“So where did five million households go? These are not opposition figures. They are Tinubu’s figures contradicting Tinubu’s figures,” Atiku said.
He also questioned the government’s reported expenditure of slightly more than N600 billion, arguing that the figures did not appear to correspond with the stated payment structure.
According to him, eligible households were expected to receive N25,000 monthly for three months, amounting to N75,000 per household.
Atiku said that if 10 million households had received the full amount, the total would have been about N750 billion, while payments to 15 million households would amount to more than N1.1 trillion.
“The arithmetic is even more troubling. Nigerians were told qualifying households would receive N25,000 monthly for three months — N75,000 per household. If 10 million households received the full payment, that would be about N750 billion. If 15 million households did, it would exceed N1.1 trillion. Yet the government says it spent just over N600 billion,” he stated.
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The former Vice President further questioned whether the figures being presented by the government represented actual recipients or merely people listed on an existing social register.
“How many names were merely lifted from an existing social register and presented as evidence of actual payment?” he asked.
He added, “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 therefore urged the Tinubu administration to provide Nigerians with verifiable information on the beneficiaries and demonstrate that the funds allocated to the programme actually reached the intended households.