Poverty alleviation, cardinal agenda of Buhari administration – Minister

Minister of Special Duties and Inter-Governmental Affairs, Senator George Akume, has said poverty alleviation remains a cardinal agenda of President Muhamudu Buhari’s administration.

The minister stated this Monday in Abuja at the inter-ministerial stakeholders meeting

on the supply of 2000 buses to cooperative societies in Nigeria.

He re-echoed President Buhari’s 2019 Democracy Day speech saying; “with leadership and a sense of purpose, we can lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years.”

Akume said the promise was recently reiterated in his speech at the general debate of the 75th Session of the United Nations General Assembly held on 22nd September 2020 where he listed some of the steps taken by his government to tackle and eradicate poverty amongst Nigerian citizens.

He said the need to tackle and eradicate poverty has become even more accentuated in the aftermath of the COVID -19 pandemic and its devastating effect on the world economy generally as well the difficulties encountered by the recent deregulation of the downstream sector which is aimed at putting the economy on sound footing.

He said “It is in line with this key agenda of Mr. President that the idea of convening an inter-ministerial meeting with other ministries, departments and agencies as well as organised private sector and civil society organisations to collaborate towards the achievement of this key agenda came up.”

He said it is envisaged that the distribution and deployment of 2000 buses being the first tranche to the cooperative societies will go a long way in ensuring that jobs are not only created but that an enabling environment for wealth creation is also engendered with the eventual acquisition and ownership of these vehicles by the members of the cooperative societies.

The minister pointed out that, the utilisation of the cooperative societies as the preferred

platform for driving this initiative arises from the fact that they are spread evenly along the length and breadth of the country and have a wider reach in terms of its membership.

“I therefore hope that the foregoing has set the right tone and pace for an interactive, integrated and all-inclusive stakeholder engagement that will ensure in this meeting as we attempt to work out the modalities for the supply and subsequent acquisition of these vehicles,” he said.

Minister of State Transport, Mrs. Gbemi Saraki thanked Akume for the initiative and urged the movement and other stakeholders to deliberate frankly and come up with modalities that will ensure equitable distribution of the busses.

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