Betta Edu has asked the Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation staff to step up to meet President Bola Tinubu’s poverty reduction target.

Ms Edu made the call on Thursday in a statement. It added that the minister addressed the ministry staff on her New Year’s first day in office.

She said taking millions of Nigerians out of poverty was a collective responsibility that must be achieved through hard work and dedication to duty.

The minister also urged humanitarian stakeholders to ensure a renewed commitment and support to lift the vulnerable Nigerians out of the poverty index by 2030 in line with the SDGs target.

The minister said Mr Tinubu was committed to eradicating poverty and reducing humanitarian challenges before the end of his administration.

“What is most important is that we must draw out our goals and we must be focused to achieve them. We must be transparent and accountable in our dealings, and we must prioritise the welfare of the poor people in all our intervention programmes. So, we need to work as a team.

”We need to be more innovative in our approach, and we need to be committed to work,” Ms Edu added.

Ms Edu assured Nigerians of the determination to work assiduously to meet the presidential mandate on poverty alleviation.

“Even during the Christmas and New Year break, we were out there bringing succour to the poor and vulnerable people across the country. In December last year, we achieved more milestones in the Conditional Cash Transfer because we paid an additional 532,000 persons following in-person verification,” the minister explained.

Ms Edu said, ”We initiated a ‘Renewed Hope Shelter for Poor and IDPs’. We also trained 500 rural people in vocational skills acquisition in Adamawa State as well as the Renewed Hope Grant for vulnerable groups in Cross River state and some other states.

“We also paid N-Power enrollees one month’s stipends out of the backlogs of their money, pending recovery of their funds removed from the account.”

(NAN)