The President Muhammadu Buhari-led
administration has disclaimed reports that Nigeria
is the poverty capital of the world.
The Federal Government Wednesday dismissed the Brookings
Report on Nigeria as the new global headquarters of poverty as it
now has the highest number of poor persons in the world.
Findings by the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy
organization based in Washington, DC, America, published a week
ago indicated that Nigeria has overtaken India as the country with
the largest number of extreme poor in early 2018 with six persons
becoming poor every minute.
The report said, “At the end of May 2018, our trajectories suggest
that Nigeria had about 87 million people in extreme poverty
compared with India’s 73 million. What is more, extreme poverty in
Nigeria is growing by six people every minute, while poverty in
India continues to fall”,
But responding fielding questions from State House
correspondents after the weekly Federal Executive Council, FEC,
meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the
Council Chamber, Presidential Villa, Abuja, the Minister of Industry,
Trade and Investments, Dr. Okechukwu Enelamah, argued that the
indices used for the report may have been complied when Nigeria
was in recession .
His words:
“I think first, we need to understand when we get these reports,
there are reports that are lagging in indicators which means,
people are reporting on history. There are reports that are leading
indicators which means that they are forward looking and of
course, there reports that capture generally what you do which is
current. “They are actually dealing with what is current. So, when
you get reports from Brooking institutes or all sorts of people, you
need to look at the context. Somebody may have written a report
when we were in recession.
Remember that if you are in a recession, what it means is that
even though, your population is growing, people don’t stop
procreating, your growth fact, which means that in theory
depending on how they run those numbers, you will be going the
other way. “There is absolutely no question that there an urgency
to create employment in Nigeria. And it has to be a collective
responsibility.
What I can tell you, with certainty based on ones background in
business and economics, is that if we complete the things on
infrastructure and you implement these reports we are doing, that
is what I mean by a leading indicator, poverty will go down. There
is no magic to it. But you have to do it first, you have to put in
the infrastructure, you have to implement the economic
programme which is what will create the opportunities, they don’t
drop from the sky.
So, I think we should roll up our sleeves as a people and do the
work because, if we don’t do it, our people continue to bear
children obviously, they would get poorer. “So, I don’t think we
should kill ourselves that poverty is something just happen. I think
it comes out of the urgent need we have as a country which is
why we are focusing as a government to make sure that we create
the enabling environment, the infrastructure and the things that are
required to create opportunities for our people and I believe that
will happen in the process of time.”
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