The number of Nigerians who live in extreme poverty can be reduced if only the Federal Government can partner with the State Government as regards scaling social investment in the economy.
This was the view of a detailed impact evaluation report of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) which was obtained by Daily Sun at the weekend.
According to the report, about 47 per cent or 92 million Nigerians live in extreme poverty considering that Nigeria has a projected GDP growth rate of under 2 per cent and a rapidly growing population at the rate of 2.6 per cent, it is estimated that by 2050, the Nigerian population will reach 400 million.
Speaking in an exclusive chat, Senior Fellow, NESG, Dr Tayo Aduloju, noted that scaled social investment and social protection is the way to reducing poverty but said its future should not be tied to political parties.
“The government should systematically scale social investment not as a party policy but as a co-national policy because of the number of poor people we have. The people we are dealing with are so vulnerable that our investment to allievate the suffering is a wise thing to do. No doubt the efforts of the government as regards initiatives aimed at reducing poverty have made feasible improvements we can measure but we will say social investment on its own cannot lift Nigeria out of poverty” He said.
According to him, to lift Nigeria out of poverty, one must have a broad based growth in non-oil sectors. China for instance lifted 600 million people out of poverty in 15 years and Indian in 10 years lifted 15 millionpeople out of poverty. How did they do that? They did it by a combination of social investment and protection of the vulnerable together with massive broad based growth.
Aduloju further revealed that about 30 million Nigerians have benefitted from the Government Enterprise Empowerment Programme (GEEP) as regards the Marketmoni, Tradermoni and FarmerMoni but noted that state government’s partnership remains a challenge. He urged the government to create National programmes without vested interest which may overwhelm the programmes as at the end, there is no positive expectation to repay.
“We need to see big moves to draw capital flows that will expand the economy which include all sectors in the market. The pace of growth so far has been sluggish and because it is slow, the rate at which we are lifting people out of poverty is sluggish as well.