President Muhammadu Buhari said his administration has lifted 10.5 million people out of poverty within two years.
Gatekeepers News reports that President Buhari stated this during his address to the nation on June 12, in commemoration of Nigeria’s Democracy Day.
In his words: “In the last two years we lifted 10.5 million people out of poverty – farmers, small-scale traders, artisans, market women and the like.”
Buhari said with the feat, he is convinced that his administration’s target to lift 100 million out of poverty can be achieved, noting that “this informed the development of a National Poverty Reduction with Growth Strategy.”
“Our over-all economic target of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years is our goal notwithstanding COVID-19.”
He admitted that in spite of his administration’s efforts and achievements, there is still much more to be done and “we are doing our best in the face of scarce resources and galloping population growth rate that consistently outstrips our capacity to provide jobs for our populace.”
The President added that: “Our response to the pandemic involved making hard choices in balancing livelihoods and public health concerns. You are all living witnesses to how successful this has been due to a number of pro-active measures put in place. Our response to COVID-19 is globally acclaimed.
“We were able to ensure that the various lockdown measures did not impact too negatively on the ability of ordinary Nigerians to continue sustaining their livelihoods.
“During the pandemic, we disbursed N5,000 to 1 million Nigerians using a Rapid Response Register and advanced N20,000 to 750,000 beneficiaries of the Conditional Cash Transfer Progamme and provided 1.37 million Nigerians with palliatives from CACOVID.
“At the same time the Federal Government released 109,000 metric tonnes of food reserve stocks and 70,000 metric tonnes of grains to the poor and vulnerable in all 36 states of the federation.
“In addition, Government reduced interest rates from 9% to 5% for struggling businesses and extended credit facilities to 548,345 beneficiaries.”
