By Chimezie Godfrey
The Minister for Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr. Betta Edu has lamented that out of the 16 million Nigerians affected by the humanitarian crisis, three states of Bornu, Adamawa, and Yobe are the worst hit.
The Minister said during an interview with journalists in Abuja that aside from the North East and North Central state of Benue, it had been tagged the humanitarian capital of Nigeria by the United Nations.
According to Dr Edu, “We have a huge task on our hands, as we speak now, over 16m Nigerians are affected by humanitarian crises either man-made or natural disaster with over 8.3m of them based in Borno, Adamawa, Yobe, and several States in the North Central; and others spread across the country.
“The UN said Benue had become the humanitarian need capital in Nigeria, and as such, a lot of work needs to be done in the humanitarian angle,” she lamented.
The Minister maintained that “one of the agendas of Tinubu administration was to ensure that poverty is alleviated in Nigeria in line with the SDG goal one.
“The President is coming up with a very robust program to alleviate Nigerians from poverty”
Dr. Edu stressed that Poverty Alleviation was now the new and important mandate of her Ministry “as our work is to see how we can get those in poverty out of poverty and those at the verge of getting into poverty increase to social safety to protect them from falling into poverty.
“A lot of work is being put into the planning stage as we have finished the debriefing from the different Departments as well as the Agencies under us; we are working assiduously to finalize the plans.
“In a couple of weeks, we’ll be fully launching into this plans to help President Tinubu take out over 136m Nigerians out of poverty as implementation has started to help cushion the effect of the fuel subsidy removal”
The Minister described the poverty alleviation schemes of her Ministry as robust plans to create jobs, promote means of livelihood, shelter, education, healthcare, and other basic needs as well as agriculture to help end hunger,Said Dr. Edu: “We’ll close all gaps to ensure Nigerians are out of poverty.
“One of the innovations we are bringing in to ensure Conditional Cash Transfer transparency is to carry out a thorough verification of the social register, validate it, and then expand it to accommodate more persons.
“We will be working with the World Bank while seeking approval from the President to begin the Conditional Cash Transfer to Nigerians.
“We want to increase the Social Safety Net for Nigerians to enable us to pull millions of Nigerians out of poverty in a transparent manner as well as count the numbers together just as we counted Covid-19 cases using a digitalized system”
The Minister assured that the poverty alleviation intervention program of the federal government was devoid of politics, adding that President Tinubu is not playing politics with it, nor is it a political gimmick.
“We are very very conscious of the fact that his passion and true intentions are to ensure that we can raise Nigerians out of poverty.
“Party politics is over as now is time for governance, President Tinubu is the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and a President for everyone irrespective of political party
“Bottlenecks will be removed and grey areas where things are not transparent enough for the public will also be removed.
“We will be upgrading and rejigging new and more robust programs that will cover more Nigerians and ensure they are effective,” the Minister.
On the challenges of accurately capturing vulnerable Nigerians for poverty alleviation, Dr. Edu disclosed that her Ministry would soon come up with a more acceptable Social Register, one that will be verified, validated, and expanded to include those who should be there while taking off those who no longer belong within that bracket.
The Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, she said, would also work with all tiers of government as well as various communities to identify persons eligible for the scheme.
On imminent flooding in parts of the country, the Minister revealed that contingency plans are already in place to assist the would-be victims.
