Nigeria’s Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Clement Agba says state governments must brace up and do more to reduce poverty for rural communities in the country.
He threw the challenge while briefing Journalists on Wednesday, at the end of this week’s cabinet meeting chaired b President Muhammadu Buhari.
“In the course of working on the national development plan, we looked at previous plans and said why they didn’t do as much as was expected. We also looked at the issues of the National Social Investment Programme.
“At the federal level, the government is putting out so much money but not seeing so much reflection, in terms of money that has been put into alleviating poverty, which is one of the reasons the government also put in place the national poverty reduction with growth strategy.
“But if the federal government puts the entire income that it earns into all of this without some form of complementarity from the State governments in playing their part. It will seem as if we are throwing money in the pond.
“Because the governors are basically our only function in their state capitals. And democracy that we preach about is delivering the greatest goods to the greatest number of people. And from our demographic, it shows that the greatest numbers of our people live in rural areas, but the governors are not working in the rural areas.
“Right now 70% of our people live in rural areas. They produce 90% of what we eat. And unfortunately 60% of what they produce is lost due to post harvest loss and it does not get to the market,” he said.
The Minister said a recent survey has shown that the country’s poverty is mostly found in the rural areas, adding that Sokoto State has the highest poverty rate in the country.
“To say in the past, we’ve always looked at monetary poverty. But poverty like we know has different pieces, different intensity and different causes. And it is for this reason; I went around the 109 senatorial districts in Nigeria, to carry out those surveys and to be able to say specifically, where this hardship is.
“The result clearly shows that 72% of poverty is in the rural areas. It also showed clearly that Sokoto state is leading in poverty with 91%. But the surprising thing is Bayelsa being the second in terms of poverty rating in the country. So you see the issue is not about availability of money. But it has to do with the application of money,” Agba explained.
PIAK
