Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, and former Vice President, has raised concerns over the controversial N600 billion cash transfers to millions of households in Nigeria by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration.
Atiku, in a statement by his media team on Thursday, questioned the whereabouts of the said beneficiaries.
Recall that on July 16 and August 2, 2026, the Presidency said in separate statements that the Tinubu administration’s expanded cash transfer programme had reached 15 million vulnerable households. However, on August 26, 2026, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Bernard Doro, told Nigerians that only “slightly over 10 million households” had been reached.
Reacting, the former Vice President questioned the contradictions in the figures issued by the President and the minister.
He demanded that the Tinubu administration, as a matter of urgency, provide details of the households that benefited from the N600 billion cash transfers.
“So where did five million households go? These are not opposition figures. They are Tinubu’s figures contradicting Tinubu’s figures.
“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,” Atiku stated.
“How many names were merely lifted from an existing social register and presented as evidence of actual payment?
“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,” he added.
Provide details of ‘N600bn cash transfers to 15m Nigerians’ — Atiku challenges Tinubu