By Harry Awurumibe, Editor Abuja Bureau
The Minister of State for Finance, Budget and National Planning Clem Ikanade Agba has called on Nigerians to hold the state governors responsible for the the high level of poverty in the country as they have failed woefully to prioritise the people’s welfare.
This is even as he accused state governors of embarking on white elephant projects like local airports and flyovers while the people are left without basic needs.
The Minister made this call while fielding questions from State House Correspondents after the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa Abuja on Wednesday.
Agba who was responding to the question on what the federal government is doing to address the sufferings of Nigerians in the face of the recent revelation by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) which said 133 million Nigerian citizens representing 63% of its population are currently living in poverty, said federal government is doing a lot to lift many Nigerians out of poverty.
Said he: “the question was, what is the Minister of Finance and I doing with regards to hardship in Nigeria, right ?. So, suggestion is that both of us are the ones creating the hardship for us to resolve it.
“In the first place. I just returned this morning (Wednesday) from a Brussels where 106 countries nowadays are 27 countries from Europe and 79 countries from the Organization of African Caribbean and Pacific countries”.
Explaining what the deliberation in Brussels, Belgium was on, the Minister said: “Basically on how should the world over tends to do around food and energy and energy crisis. I think that it’s always good for us to put things in the right perspective.
“Like I say to people, when you say government, we should be able to specify which government we are talking about. Is it the federal government? Is it a state government or is it a local government? Because we all have different responsibilities.
“And it is for this reason that we last year started some work on the multi dimensional poverty index, for which we recently released the report and it was launched by Mr. President”.
Speaking further Agba said: “to say in the past, we’ve always looked at monetary poverty. But poverty like we know has different phases, different intensity and different causes.
“And it is for this reason, I went around the 109 Senatorial districts in Nigeria, to carry out those survey and to be able to say specifically, where this hardship is. The result clearly shows that 72% of poverty is in the rural areas.
“It also showed clearly, that Sokoto state is leading in poverty rate with 91%. But the surprising thing is Bayelsa state being the second in terms of poverty rating in the country. So you see the issue is not about availability of money. But it has to do with the application of money.
“In the course of working on the National Development Plan, we looked at previous plans and say why they didn’t do as much as was expected. We also looked at the issues of the National Social Investment Programme.
“At the federal level, government is putting out so much money but not seeing so much reflection, in terms of money that has been put in alleviating poverty, which is one of the reasons the government also put in place the national poverty reduction with growth strategy.
“But if the federal government puts the entire income that it earns into all of this without some form of complementarity from the State governments in playing their part. It will seem as if we are throwing money in the pond.
Because the governors basically our only functioning in their state capitals.
“And democracy that we preach about is delivering the greatest goods to the greatest number of people. And from our demographic, it shows that the greatest number of our people who live in rural areas, but the governors are not working in the rural areas.
“Right now 70% of our people live in rural areas they produce 90% of what we eat. And unfortunately 60% of what they produce is lost due to post harvest loss and it does not get to the market.
“When we’re talking about food prices, like I mentioned right now as driving inflation, prices of food at the farm gates are low. But when you now take it to the urban areas, you find out that the prices are high due to supply chain disruptions, lack of infrastructure to take them there. I think from the federal government side we are doing our best.
“But we need to push that rather than governors continuing to compete to take loans to build airports that are not necessarily where they have other airports so close to them. Or governors now competing to build flyovers all over the place and we applaud they should concentrate on building rural roads so that the farmer can at least get their products to the market.
And you find that if they do that and with the new policy in the national development plan that talks about taking power to the rural areas, especially of out-grid power that can easily be put, you begin to attract industries to those areas for value addition.
“UNIDO report shows us (Nigeria) in terms of employment, the MSMEs employs 70% of our people. So you can imagine how much progress we will make when you find that there are roads, there is power in these rural areas.
In terms of agriculture, you find out that the federal government doesn’t have a land that they would plant, government has pushed for the Anchor Borrowers programme and that is going on very well but the state control lands states.
“They are the ones to provide land for agriculture. They are not investing in that. They would rather build skyscrapers in a city where people will see and clap but the skyscrapers does not put food on the table”.
Continuity Agba said: “like I always say, if you look at the Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. He says you have to take care of the basic needs of individuals first before you begin to talk about self actualization.
“So we need to take care of the issues of food, nutrition, housing and clothing for our people. Before we begin to think of how to go to the moon and begin to build flyovers and airports in the state capital, that is the missing link which we need to push so that we’ll be able to catalyze growth. But continuing to say federal government or my sister, Zainab and I what are we doing? We are doing our parts”.
On the recent revelation by the outspoken Governor of Rivers state, Nyesom Ezenwo Wike that President Buhari facilitated the payment of humongous money to the governors of nine oil-bearing states the Minister said: “I’m sure Wike told you guys about monies that have been released over N500 billion to the oil producing states and I’ve seen some disclaimers from the states saying, it is small small money they are getting on a monthly basis.
“And some are giving some half truths of what they have received. We need to hold them accountable. So that together we all can grow our economy”.
