Recently, the Forum of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation and Secretaries to State Government met to harmonize various poverty eradication programs and policies of the federal and the states government in order to achieve the vision of the current administration on lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty within 10 years. The forum which was themed “Strengthening National Poverty Eradication Strategy” dwelled on the using agriculture, a comparative advantage the country had neglected and remained fallow over the years.
At the end of the meeting, a communiqué issued suggested the need for a multi-MDA (Ministries, Department and Agencies) and the Federal Government-State alignment for policy implementation to ensure a national approach to poverty eradication in the country. The meeting held that SSGs are expected to strengthen existing coordination mechanisms of all poverty alleviation programmes, set up effective coordination and synchronization at the state level. They are also expected to harmonize and be complementary between and within Ministries and agencies as well as appropriate interface with the federal government through the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development.
The meeting also agreed that there is the need to recognize the multidimensional nature of poverty in the country and acknowledged that agriculture is the greatest and largest opportunity to improve mechanization and value addition in the agriculture chain.
Nigeria has no reason to be poverty infested in spite all the natural endowment and arable land the country is blessed with. The country is also blessed with human resources, the best of brains that emerge from the country and are doing the country proud at the global stage. The challenge we face as a country is neither natural nor spiritual, it is lack of sincere leadership and policy somersault.
We have had best of poverty eradication policies birthed by various governments. We recalled the National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP) of the President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration, the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme SURE-P of the Jonathan administration and the various national social Investment programmes of the current administration, yet the poverty level continue to expand with the policies.
The reasons for these are not farfetched; none of the poverty eradication programmes and policies of the successive administration was not enmeshed in one form of corruption and irregularities or the other.
Recently, the Chinese Government announced that it has successfully lifted the population out of extreme poverty, we urged that the government of the President Muhammadu Buhari and the 36 states governments not only proactively carry out poverty eradication programmes and policies that would trickle down to the masses but they must ensure that the programmes are transparent and devoid of irregularities. A tint of irregularity is enough to distabilise the programme and would further plunge more Nigerians into poverty.
