Peoples Gazette
President Muhammadu Buhari says Nigeria’s economic performance gives him comfort amid millions of Nigeria pushed below the poverty line.
“The performance of our economy despite COVID-19 gives me comfort,” said Mr Buhari, “that we can achieve our goal, but we need to seriously scale up and work more with states and local governments.”
He added, “This call becomes more pertinent in the face of recent forecasts by the IMF, the World Bank and our own Nigerian Economic Summit Group, which all agreed that Nigeria needs to frontally tackle her poverty situation if our economic gains are to be sustained.’’
He stated this on Tuesday as he inaugurated the National Steering Committee of the National Poverty Reduction with Growth Strategy with Mr Osinbajo as its chairman.
The president urged the committee to begin work immediately so that the Technical Working Group (TWG) would also “begin putting the nuts and bolts together.”
Speaking to Mr Osinbajo and other committee members, Mr Buhari urged, “You may, therefore, wish to consider providing immediate guidance to the TWG on the following: establishment of the NIG-Fund leveraging on the Development Finance Assessment Report, public and private sector funding.
“Harmonise existing human capital development; scale up existing poverty reduction initiatives such as the Social Investment Programme, various agricultural support initiatives as well as support to micro, small and medium enterprises.”
He advised the committee to leverage the existing development partner support programmes and projects “with potential for quick-wins like the Nigeria COVID-19 Action Recovery and Economic Stimulus. ”
This story first appeared in Peoples Gazette
