The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential Campaign Council, on Thursday, said the latest data by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on the number of Nigerians living in poverty is an indication that the All Progressive Congress (APC) led federal government is leaving behind, a legacy of poverty.
NBS in the report released on Thursday disclosed that 133 million Nigerians are multidimensionally poor.
The Director of Strategic Communications of the Council, Dele Momodu, while speaking on the NBS report, said the President Muhammadu Buhari administration is “leaving behind a legacy of poverty, adding that the current administration cannot give what it does not have”.
“ You can’t give what you don’t have and that is why Atiku Abubakar is the best choice. What he has been able to do in public life what he has been able to do in private life when you look at them you will know that he is the most experienced and prepared candidate in the race today there is none close to him. He is the one that operated at the national level so he knows what to do immediately,” he said.
NBS revealed that 63 percent of Nigerians are poor due to a lack of access to health, education, and living standards, alongside unemployment and shocks.
According to the latest National Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) Report launched on Thursday, which offers a multivariate form of poverty assessment, the NBS identified “deprivations across health, education, living standards, work and shocks”
Statistician-General at the NBS, Semiu Adeniran, said “it is the first time they will conduct a standard multidimensional poverty survey in Nigeria.
“The survey was implemented in 2021 to 2022 and it is the largest survey with a sample size of over 56,610 people in 109 senatorial districts in the 36 stated of Nigeria,” he said.
The United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Nigeria, Matthias Schmale, who revealed the findings from the report said 63 per cent of Nigerians are multidimensionally poor meaning that they are being derived in more than one dimension of the four measured.
He said, “Multidimensional poverty is more pronounced in rural areas where 72 per cent of people are poor compared to urban areas where we have 42 per cent.
“Gender disparity continues to affect the population with one in seven poor people living in a household in which a man has completed high school but the woman has not.”
In another statement signed by Phrank Shaibu, Special Assistant , Public Communication to Atiku Abubakar, the PDP said the data call for concern.
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Shaibu said: “The data by governmental and non governmental organisations have underlined the fact that the number of Nigerians living in poverty is alarmingly high but this latest report by the National Bureau of Statistics about the multidimensional height of our poverty level calls for concern, more so that, in Buhari’s Nigeria, there have been no convincing measures being taken to indicate that anything concrete is being done about it.
“Included in this troubling reality is that over 23 million youths, mostly educated and potentially productive, are unemployed.
“This development portends only one thing: a threat to the security and stability of the Nigerian nation.
“From the monetary perspective, the Central Bank of Nigeria, whose job it is to check inflation claims that it is doing its best to ensure that the overall prices for goods and services remain low, stable and predictable even as records on the ground point to the contrary.
“Although the Buhari administration claims to be empowering potential investors; big and small so as to improve people’s lives, records show that 54.7 percent of Nigerians are financially excluded due to low level bank penetration in the country, and that beside the 916 Microfinance Banks, the 24 ‘big banks’ have only a little over 6000 branches, mostly concentrated in a few urban centres.
“To worsen matters, the social safety net scheme introduced by the federal government in 2016, to tackle poverty and hunger has not made any significant impact owing to poor implementation, corruption allegation and politicization.”
The party declared that only sensible government will reckon that by redirecting public expenditure away from recurrent expenses and unnecessary consumption back to capital projects, the government can have positive impact on incomes and employment.
“Such newly-employed individuals can in turn pay their bills, rent and essentials, thus providing income to the farmers, herdsmen, landlords and the like,” he said.
“Industrial policy, the kind that is encapsulated in Alhaji Atiku Abubakar’s blueprint, is another area to concentrate on. A nation of 200 million people cannot abandon its manufacturing sector in favour of importation. We must ensure that most of what we eat, drink, wear or otherwise use on daily basis are locally produced, thereby creating local employment and saving foreign exchange. The current policy thrust may give government additional revenue but it is actually wasting scarce resources and generating more jobs and incomes for foreign countries.”
The party called for the creation of more employment opportunities, adding that “The worn excuse that the sector does not generate much employment because it is capital intensive has been discredited by the example of big countries like Russia and Brazil, as well as small ones like Trinidad and Tobago.
“So far, we seem to focus mainly on what taxes, fees or royalties we can extract rather than developing the upstream and downstream sectors, through the creation of integrated complexes to provide chemicals, plastics and other industrial inputs for our industrial uses and export. The days of simply exporting crude should by now have been over,” the statement read.
“It is for the purpose of departing from Buhari’s legacy of poverty that Atiku’s policy document code-named Unity-SEED, which stands for Unity, Security, Economy, Education and Devolution of power to states and local governments lays emphasis on Promoting diversification and linkages between agriculture, industry and micro and small enterprises.
“Although the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate believes that the oil sector shall remain key to Nigeria’s development as it continues to provide fiscal resources for investment in economic and social infrastructure, his plan is to give priority to the promotion of sustained non-oil sector growth and enhanced linkages between the oil and non-oil sectors.”
The statement noted that Atiku shall support the development of a commercially-driven, technology-proficient agriculture which ensures food security and interfaces with the manufacturing sector for the supply of raw materials.
“The policy document projects increased agricultural output from the current level of N23.85 trillion to about N40 trillion by 2029. This would imply an annual growth in agricultural sector from 4.11% to 10% between 2023 and 2029,” the statement read.
“One thing is clear from what the Wazirin Adamawa brings to the table: that agriculture remains the most viable sector if unemployment and low income are to be properly tackled. This is understandable since agriculture still provides most of our people with their only employment and source of income, and contributes more to GDP than the petroleum sector.
“All said, Nigerians need to concentrate on employing more people in that sector, boosting their production and productivity. Critical to this is the creation of linkages between agriculture and industry, modernizing farming and animal husbandry, providing inputs and improved varieties as well as developing and providing cheap implements, as part of the overall strategy to reverse Buhari’s legacy of poverty”.
