VP Osinbajo and his spokesman, Akande
Speaking on Saturday at a breakfast event attended by some
presidents and heads of delegations to the African Union (AU) meeting in
Kigali, capital of Rwanda, Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo says the N500
billion social investment scheme of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led
government is the largest social protection programme in the history of
Nigeria.
VP Osinbajo's senior special assistant to the vice-president on
media and publicity, Laolu Akande, disclosed that the vice-president
said the welfare of the citizens is the priority of Buhari’s government,
adding that the current administration is making efforts to lift many
people out of poverty.
“In Nigeria, in the current budget cycle we have the largest
social protection programme in the history of the country. It’s a N500B
programme-(worth over $2.5B as at the time budget was signed).
“Basically we are looking at lifting many out of poverty, of
course many are farmiliar with the size of the Nigerian state and we
have close to hundred and ten million people who are poor and about
two-tenth are in extreme poverty.
“So, it is a very huge problem and part of what we are trying
to do is to look at how not just to empower people but also to ensure
that what they are given is sustainable.
“For the women, we are doing a programme, micro-credit
programme for a million market women and artisans. All would be given
facilities, training facilities as well to enable them to be able to do
some work for themselves and to continue to be able to live.
“And we think that giving this micro-credit loan to women is to
make sure that they handle money better and do a much better work on
the whole.
“So, l think that with what we ve’ done already, we have seen that they are certainly going to work,” Akande quoted Osinbajo as saying.
According to TheCable News, the vice president also explained some
other parts of the programme, recalling the role the Bill & Melinda
Gate Foundation played in assisting the government identify its target.
“In the case of conditional cash transfer, again we are handing
these to women. We are giving (this to) another million, to the poorest
of the poor.
“In determining who the poorest is, we had problems on that,
but we have very good assistance from the World Bank and the Bill Gates
Foundation. They helped in trying to map the really poor.
“We had to get inside the communities looking for the poorest
of the poor with the small sum of money which is about N5000, which is a
sum of money that would be given to the poorest every month, which may
enable them feed themselves and find something that they may do and on
the condition that they send their children to school and participate in
immunisation.
“So, we are really excited about some of the works we are
trying to do around the SDGs and we are hopeful that we’ll be able to
get the social protection programme working,” he said.
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