Daily Post Nigeria Ike Chinedu: What to do to pacify protesters Home News Politics Metro Entertainment Sport Opinion Ike Chinedu: What to do to pacify protesters Published on July 21, 2024 By Daily Post Staff On Thursday, July 19, 2024, the House of Representatives (HoR) resolved to support the Federal Government with N648 million for six months by cutting down their salaries by 50% to support food sufficiency across the country and to address the high cost of food. This gesture, as laudable as it seems at first glance, is grossly insignificant. Billions of naira have been allocated to the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs in the past five years for onward disbursement to the poorest of the poor across the country to alleviate their plight, yet this intervention has made no impact on their lives.
They are still poor. This N648 million the HoR is giving to the Federal Government will not leave a scratch in the tough skin of the suffering the Nigerian masses are going through. This ill-advised gesture is an insult to the collective sensibilities and intelligence of Nigerians.
What the HoR need to do to show its sympathy for the plight of ordinary Nigerians and to empathise with the suffering of the poorest of the poor is to revisit the 2024 budget and review the line items whose costs its members inflated. One infamous example is the allocation of N82.5 billion to construct 427 boreholes, amounting to N193 million per unit.
This amount is outrageously inflated. One wonders if th.