The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Kwara State has learnt that Vice-President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo will visit Ilorin this week to launch the Federal Government’s Social Investment programme, TraderMoni.
The party welcomes the Vice-President and his entourage to the State of harmony and wish them a successful flag off of the programme.
We, however, call on Prof. Osinbajo and his team to ensure that the scheme is devoid of political influences, even though we strongly believe the programme is a vote-buying gimmick by the All Progressives Congress (APC) led government ahead of the 2019 general elections.
The party notes that the scheme was launched in 2015 and in the past three years, the Vice-President did not visit any state for TraderMoni, but few months to the general election, he has been going round markets in different states of the country to distribute money to traders and artisans. We want to believe this is not a ploy by the APC to induce them ahead of the elections.
Nevertheless, the Kwara PDP warns against the partisanship of the initiative and advises that there should be no discrimination in the selection of beneficiaries in the State.
The Vice-President and his team must ensure that beneficiaries are selected without recourse to political affiliations. As this is a government scheme and not a party affair, beneficiaries must cut across political divides.
We demand that criteria for selection be made transparent and strictly adhered to, and all beneficiary traders and artisans must follow the normal procedure irrespective of where they belong.
Tradermoni is a programme for all Nigerians and not just for the APC alone. We, therefore, call on the Vice-president to include representatives of other political parties in the flag-off ceremony of the scheme in Kwara.
