Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar is demanding transparency from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration over a N600 billion cash transfer program that appears riddled with mathematical inconsistencies. Where did five million households disappear to?
The controversy erupted after contradictory statements from government officials. The Presidency announced on July 16 and August 2 that the expanded cash transfer program had reached 15 million vulnerable households. Yet Minister of Humanitarian Affairs Bernard Doro told Nigerians on August 26 that only “slightly over 10 million households” had actually been reached.
Atiku’s concerns go deeper than the numbers. According to the program’s terms, qualifying households should receive N25,000 monthly for three months, totaling N75,000 per household. If 10 million households received full payment, that’s roughly N750 billion. If 15 million did, it would exceed N1.1 trillion. The government claims it spent just over N600 billion.
The cash transfer confusion comes as Nigeria grapples with worsening security. Nigerian kidnappers collected nearly $5.8 million in ransoms between July 2025 and June 2026, according to SBM Intelligence, with abductions surging 66% to 7,825 people. A Boko Haram faction alone collected 90% of recorded ransoms, largely from two mass kidnappings that each seized more than 300 people.
“A name on a social register is not a bank alert,” Atiku stated bluntly. It’s a question millions of Nigerians are now asking: where did the money actually go?
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