President Muhammadu Buhari says Nigeria’s economic performance gives him comfort amid millions of Nigeria pushed below the poverty line.

“The performance of our economy despite COVID-19 gives me comfort,” said Mr Buhari, “that we can achieve our goal, but we need to seriously scale up and work more with states and local governments.”

He added, “This call becomes more pertinent in the face of recent forecasts by the IMF, the World Bank and our own Nigerian Economic Summit Group, which all agreed that Nigeria needs to frontally tackle her poverty situation if our economic gains are to be sustained.’’

He stated this on Tuesday as he inaugurated the National Steering Committee of the National Poverty Reduction with Growth Strategy with Mr Osinbajo as its chairman.

The president urged the committee to begin work immediately so that the Technical Working Group (TWG) would also “begin putting the nuts and bolts together.”

Speaking to Mr Osinbajo and other committee members, Mr Buhari urged, “You may, therefore, wish to consider providing immediate guidance to the TWG on the following: establishment of the NIG-Fund leveraging on the Development Finance Assessment Report, public and private sector funding.

“Harmonise existing human capital development; scale up existing poverty reduction initiatives such as the Social Investment Programme, various agricultural support initiatives as well as support to micro, small and medium enterprises.”

He advised the committee to leverage the existing development partner support programmes and projects “with potential for quick-wins like the Nigeria COVID-19 Action Recovery and Economic Stimulus.’’

Mr Buhari expressed confidence that Mr Osinbajo-led poverty committee would lay the foundation and demonstrate in the next two years the practicality of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years.

“As you all know, funding will always be a challenge, especially in these times when resources are limited. The NPRGS has, thus, proposed the establishment of a private equity fund, the Nigeria Investment and Growth Fund (NIG-Fund), to lead our resource mobilisation drive and also manage the resources in a sustainable manner,’’ he disclosed.

Mr Osinbajo said the NPRGS would consolidate the regime’s other efforts, N-Power, school feeding and conditional cash transfer programmes, to reduce poverty.

Mr Osinbajo noted that the committee would reflect in its framework and implementation Mr Buhari’s position that local governments, states and the federal government should collaborate to alleviate poverty.

Earlier, Boss Mustapha, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, said the poverty situation in the country already assumed an enormous proportion, noting that Mr Buhari’s regime responded to the COVID-19 poverty fallout swiftly and was able to a quick exit from recession.

(NAN)