Oyo residents protest over FG’s palliative measure
Residents of Ona-Ara Local Government in Oyo State yesterday staged a protest to register their displeasure over the conditional cash transfer to the poorest households in their local government. The federal government had last week announced payment to the poorest households in the country as a palliative measure for its stay-at-home policy to fight the […]
Residents of Ona-Ara Local Government in Oyo State yesterday staged a protest to register their displeasure over the conditional cash transfer to the poorest households in their local government.
The federal government had last week announced payment to the poorest households in the country as a palliative measure for its stay-at-home policy to fight the spread of the coronavirus in the country.
Speaking on a popular radio station in Ibadan, the leader of the federal government’s delegation to the state, Mr Oyekola Oladipo, said all the traditional leaders were aware of the process for the selection of beneficiaries of the palliative measure.
But residents of Ona-Ara local government, however, denied benefiting from the case transfer and demanded to know the names of beneficiaries in their community.
Oniladuntan of Laduntan land, Oba Adebowale Adeyemi (JP) in Ona Ara Local Government Area of the state and Baale of Akanran in the same council, Baale Toheeb Alawaye in separate interviews with City News on Thursday in Ibadan, said none of their subjects benefited from the federal government’s palliative measure.
Oba Adeyemi said: “We don’t know anything about it and we are yet to see anyone in our council to confirm to us that they benefited from the money. The man said on the radio that we were all carried along before disbursement of the cash, but I want to tell the entire world that we are not aware and none of our people has received money.
“If federal government really mean to support the poor, community leaders shouldn’t be exempted. We know those who are extremely poor in our locality and with their monitoring team, we know how to distribute it. But as they have done it now, they can only tell us those who got it.”
On his part, Baale Alawaye said people were not happy over the announcement on radio that they were given money when they didn’t get money from government.
He said; “We don’t know people who received the money in Ona-ara local government. When we heard that Baales are the ones giving them the names of indigent people in our local government, we were surprised because it is a lie. They didn’t give any of our people in this council.”