The Nigerian Citizens Welfare Project (NCWP) has urged the government to urgently re-enact the era of essential commodity distribution to the people.
NCWP stressed that this should be done immediately, while the Federal and state Governments are looking at other options to cushion the hardship brought about by the petrol subsidy removal.

The group’s Director General and former House of Representatives candidate, Isoko Federal Constituency, Delta State, in the 2023 Nigerian election, Esanerovo Agbodo, made this call in a statement, yesterday.

The group said: “The National Identification Number (NIN) should be used to identify real Nigerian families selected randomly across the country, and subsidised food items sent to them every month. This would drive down the prices of food in the next two years, while the government continues to consolidate its support for farmers nationwide to guarantee food security.

“Also, transportation cards or vouchers should be printed and distributed nationwide to partner with the Nigerian Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) and other willing Nigerians to drive down transportation costs, especially for farm produce, educational materials, students and other essential services.

“The government should also gradually flood the system with interstate and intrastate buses to reduce transport fares. Since it will take time and huge resources to satisfy the current transportation gap, existing vehicles should come to the rescue before locally manufactured and imported ones arrive.

“We need to urgently do these to stabilise the system and ameliorate the current economic hardship in Nigeria.

“Increasing minimum wage for civil servants without addressing the issues raised above may worsen the situation with more inflation and hardship for citizens.”