Nigerian govt approves N400bn for poverty reduction – Official

The National Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy, NPRGS, says N400 billion has been approved for various poverty reduction schemes in 2022.

Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa spoke with State House correspondents after a meeting of the National Steering Committee of NPRGS on Thursday at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

President Muhammadu Buhari, had in 2021, inaugurated NPRGS to be chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.

Mr Sule said the meeting was to review the implementation of what was approved in the budget.

“It is a meeting of the steering committee of the Presidential Poverty and Growth Strategy.

“The last meeting we had, the fourth meeting, we were able to set up various working groups that we are going to prepare  total budget that was required.

”So, they were able to do that and then we were able to obtain also the president’s approval.

”Based on the president’s approval and availability in the budget, so this meeting that we had was actually just to go through the implementation  of whatever has been approved, both in the budget and by the president.”

He said that the first highlight of the meeting was to commend the technical groups that had been able to put up together their budget request.

The governor listed some of the programmes through which the Federal Government was implementing the NPRGS.

 “Looking at what is available in the budget this year, which is roughly N400 billion, the Humanitarian Ministry is going to take N350 billion for the expansion of the various programmes like Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), Conditional Cash Transfer, Farmer Money, Market Money and the rest of that.

“There is also another N50 billion that is going to be reserved for the various other programmes like in the Ministry of Agriculture for rural roads, electricity in terms of solar.

“Those are the various areas that we discussed,” he said.

President Muhammadu Buhari on June 22, 2021 inaugurated the committee tasked with driving the target of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years.

NAN