FG And Poverty Eradication

Who would say that the current federal government is not eradicating poverty in the country? An administration that had provided 8.96million school children food under the Home Grown School Feeding Programme; supported over 297,000 poor and vulnerable Nigerians with cash transfer of N5,000; successfully disbursed more than 308,000 loans of N50,000 and above under the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) and 200,000 Young Unemployed Graduates Empowered through the N-Power scheme , while over 308,000 had been selected for consideration for the second batch;  raised capital provisions for agriculture from N8.8billion in 2015 to N149.2billion in the 2018 budget; disbursed over N82billion  as credit to more than 350,000 farmers under the Anchor Borrowers’ programme; revitalized 14 moribund fertilizer blending plants through the Presidential Fertilizer Initiative (PFI), with a total capacity of 2.3million metric tons of NPK fertilizer; increased Nigeria’s milled rice production by about 60% and had brought eight new rice mills into production since 2016 according to the minister of Budget and National Planning, Sen. Udoma Udo Udoma, will you say such government is not fighting poverty in the land?
Speaking on arrangement for the just concluded 24th Nigerian Economic Summit some weeks ago, the minister boated that with the above achievements, the federal government had moved 10.073million Nigerians from poverty to prosperity.
Similarly, we have been told that through the “Traders Moni” initiative of the federal government, two million traders across the country will get N10, 000 collateral free loan each before the end of this year. The loan, it is said, is designed to further enhance entrepreneurial opportunity for the rural poor. At an event in Enugu State recently, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo announced that at least 30,000 traders from the state would benefit from the loan. Same is applicable to many other states.
What baffles many however is that despite all the claimed wonderful accomplishments, Nigeria is still rated as the country with the highest number of poor people in the world; poverty is still on the increase, many citizens cannot boast of one good meal a day, many children are out of school because their parents could hardly feed them, let alone pay their tuition even in the perceived free-education, unemployment level is higher than ever, workers are being owed salaries, prices of food and commodities are on daily increase. The most worrisome is that you can hardly see anyone that has benefitted from the scheme. Could it be that the beneficiaries of the so- called poverty alleviation schemes are not actually the poor but friends, family members, cronies of those at the corridors of power and members of the ruling party as being alleged by some people?
It is therefore high time government became more sincere, realistic and transparent in the fight against poverty. The idea of giving N10,000 loan to traders might seem laudable in the eyes of the authority but can that really solve the poverty problem in the country? A person collecting that loan may have backlog of problems ranging from no food for her family, no money for her children’s school fees,  unpaid  huge hospital bills and others. So he will probably use the money to solve her problems instead of trading with it.
Nigerians do not need handouts in the name of poverty alleviation. What they need is a conducive environment to make them succeed in what they do. They need power, water, good road, well equipped hospitals and other infrastructure. Nigerians need good policies, justice and equity that will make our society to be organized. Not a society where a farmer will borrow money to invest in his farm and half way into the season, a rap-tag herder comes with his cattle to feast on the crops.
So, unless our political leaders both at the federal, state and local government levels, who promised before coming into power that they would alleviate the sufferings of the people, start taking sincere steps to fulfill this promise, poverty will remain with us. Poverty alleviation should not be a prerogative of the federal government. Rather, the state governors and local government chairmen should synergize with the federal government to reduce the high poverty rate in the nation.

Calista Ezeaku