Osinbajo Says Nigeria Far Behind In Eradicating Poverty

The Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, has said that Nigeria was far behind in eradicating poverty out of the land.

Osinbajo disclosed this at the second Abiola Ajimobi roundtable programme to mark the 70th birthday of the two-time governor of Oyo State.

Speaking on the topic, ” Managing the Dynamics of Nigeria’s Advancement: The Socio-Economic options”, Prof Osinbajo said, “there are two issues and I’m glad that by the response of discussants, the two issues stood out. One is the environment for local and foreign investments and second is eradicating poverty.”

“It’s very obvious that we are behind the race in eradicating poverty. The reason being that before now, there were no systematic and focused approach to eradicating poverty in our country. This is why from 2014-2015, the APC decided to write social investment into our manifestos”.

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“So, the social investment we are talking about is not by accident. It’s a comprehensive programme to tackle poverty. It’s a detailed programme and first of its kind anywhere in Africa. The programme is very seriously scrutinized by the World Bank and as a matter of fact, the World Bank is a collaborator”.

” Till date, that school feeding programme accounts for feeding over 9.9m pupils in 33 states and we are going to 36. 540,000 people are being paid monthly. Of course, it’s not a perfect programme but it’s the first pragmatic approach to tackle poverty”.

“That’s what countries with large population of the poor did and today it has taken a large number out of poverty. It’s very important to bear in mind that we are at the first stage of the programme and we will do a lot more”.