The President of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) Joe Ajero, has signified that the N5bn palliative package per state as announced by the Federal Government won’t amount to N1500 per person when shared among over 133 million Nigerians who are multi-dimensionally poor.
Ajero, who made this known on Friday, argued that there was no way N185bn would amount to something impactful, when shared among 133 million Nigerians who are multi-dimensionally poor, according to statistics he got from the National Bureau of Statistics.
The leader of the labor union insisted that even if the money were translated to the equivalent of six trailers of rice, it would not equal one cup of rice for each person.
According to him, “Let us assume that it is a palliative and not a loan, you will agree that it is difficult to feel the impact of such an amount at a time like this when the Bureau of Statistics has come up to say that over 133 million Nigerians are multi-dimensionally poor.
“You start to wonder about the impact of N185bn to 133 million people by their admittance, who are multi-dimensionally poor.
“In fact from the first increase in pump price of petrol and the last one, a lot of people moved from the borderline to a very high level of poverty.
“If you calculate and do an arithmetic on that, you will discover that it won’t amount to N1500 per person and you ask if that’s the impact that we want to achieve,” he said.
He continued by saying that more Nigerians had crossed the line into extreme poverty between the first and most recent increases in the pump price for petroleum.
