Buhari administration has spent N500bn to alleviate poverty, says Osinbajo

Nigeria’s vice president Yemi Osinbajo on Tuesday said the government has injected the sum of N500 billion to create wealth and alleviate poverty.

Osinbajo said this at the 58th Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) themed “Transition, Transformation and Sustainable Institutions” at the International Conference Centre, Abuja.

According to him, one way of checking poverty is to incrementally improve capacity and put money in the hands of the poorest. This is, he said, the government is doing through the National Social Investment Programmes (NSIP) is doing.

He said that it was in recognition of the menace of poverty that the Federal Government rolled out the (NSIP) aimed at improving capacity and alleviating poverty.

“We started off in 2016 looking at a budget that was crafted differently; all along if you look at the way we have approached economic policies, it has always been the case of top-down approach,” Osinbajo said.

“So, we look at how to improve industry; how to improve manufacturing; we look at how to give loans to Micro Small and Medium Enterprises(MSMEs),”

“The N500 billion covers conditional cash transfer to the poorest; one million of the poorest; we work with the World Bank for special coverage to determine the beneficiaries,”

Osinbajo explained that the approach “adopted in 2016 was first to create to create a safety net; so we, for the first time, we put in the budget a line for is called NSIP; that is N500 billion for NSIP and that is the largest of its kind in the history of the country.”

The vice president disclosed that 500,000 graduates had been employed under the N-Power which was a part of NSIP for providing jobs to graduates.

He also listed TraderMoni scheme which was a micro-credit scheme aimed at the empowering 2 million petty traders as a part of the ways the government is trying to reduce poverty.