Presidency Says 67% Nigerians Live Below Poverty Line

The Presidency on Thursday, said about 67 per cent of Nigerians live below poverty line.

The Special Adviser to the President on Social Protection, Maryam Uwais, said this during a social protection practitioners and academic dialogue programme held in Abuja.

According to her, social protection was a response and a key strategy towards reducing poverty and socio-economic vulnerabilities in the population as well as to encourage payments digitalisation and financial inclusion.

Mrs. Uwais said that some of the challenges facing the country are high poverty, high unemployment rates, increased insecurity, gender inequality and poor literacy rates, among others.

She stated further that the federal government has put in place a four-point National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), including Conditional Cash Transfer Programme (CCT) which “involves the direct transfer of ₦5,000 to the targeted poor and vulnerable households.”

She added, “The Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) assists vulnerable families, feeds primary 1-3 school children one nutritious meal a day and provides an incentive to send them to school which is targeted to feed 5.5 million children.

“The N-Power Programme is designed to put 500,000 young Nigerian graduates on employment and empower or train 100,000 non-graduates with necessary tools to create, develop and build projects that will change our communities, economy and nation.

“There is also Government Enterprise Empowerment Programme (GEEP), which is targeted financial inclusion and empowerment loans programme to deliver maximum impact to the economically under-represented groups that targets about 1.6 million beneficiaries.”

She therefore, urged stakeholders to partner with NSIP, saying the collaboration would engender the actualization of its goals.

She added that the country’s challenges would be combated by collective efforts with comprehensive solutions.