Osinbajo Heads The New Poverty Reduction Plan Committee
With the recent World Bank’s report that about seven million Nigerians were pushed into poverty in 2020, it is commendable that President Muhammadu Buhari has inaugurated a committee on poverty reduction. The initiative known as the National Steering Committee of the National Poverty Reduction with Growth Strategy (NPRGS) is chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. Apparently, the new poverty reduction plan is part of President Buhari’s commitment to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years. It is expected that the plan will go a long way to alleviate poverty in the country.
While welcoming the plan, we urge members of the committee to ensure the faithful implementation of the programme. We believe that any effort to lift millions of Nigerians out of poverty must be pursued with vigour and sincerity of purpose. It is good that the NPRGS had already proposed the establishment of a private equity fund that will drive and sustain the project.
To achieve the objective of the initiative, the committee should come up with measures that will holistically address the underlying causes of poverty and develop programmes that will deal with them. It must take into due consideration the poverty level in each geo-political zone of the country and the best way to tackle them. It is also instructive that China, the world’s populous country of about 1.6 billion people, and India, until recently, the poverty capital of the world, did not achieve their feats in poverty reduction by leaving their citizens to the mercy of market forces.
Osinbajo Heads The New Poverty Reduction Plan Committee
At the moment, the nation’s economic growth has not been impressive with soaring unemployment and poverty figures. This shows that more Nigerians have grown poorer in the last two years. Therefore, the government cannot claim that it has pulled more than 10 million people out of poverty in the last two years when the unemployment rate is rising steadily and millions of Nigerians are living on less than $1.90 per day. The task before the Osinbajo-led committee is enormous but achievable. The government should muster the political will to achieve it.
Let the committee draw inspiration from India that has reportedly lifted 271 million people out of poverty in 10 years, between 2006 and 2016, while China has the record of lifting more than 770 million out of poverty. China achieved the feat through what it described as “targeted poverty reduction.” Nigeria can equally do the same.
Interestingly, good policies are never in short supply in the country. What we lack is the political will to faithfully implement them. We urge the committee, which includes the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, Chief of Staff to the President, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari, six state governors from each of the six geo-political zones, to hit the ground running. They should work as a team and carry along federal ministries, extra ministerial departments and agencies, state governments and other stakeholders to achieve the desired results.
The programme must be adequately monitored to enhance its effectiveness in achieving the goal of lifting 100 million people out of poverty in 10 years. We recall that the World Bank in its recent report stated that about 25 million adults in Nigerian households did not eat for an entire day in 2020, especially during the COVID-19 lockdown. This shows that the poverty level is indeed frightening.
There is urgent need to change the narrative. It is clear that people’s purchasing power has declined, with high cost of living making Nigerians three times more miserable than they were five years ago, according to a recent misery index report.
We believe that poverty reduction should go beyond rhetoric and official pronouncements not backed with concrete implementable actions. Let the present plan be people-centred and driven. Anything less will expand the poverty net instead of reducing it.
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