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FG to establish Poverty Alleviation Trust Fun
Dr. Betta Edu, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, stated on Thursday in Abuja that the Federal Government would create a Presidential Humanitarian and Poverty Alleviation Trust Fund.
Edu, who spoke at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s country director’s visit to the humanitarian ministry, said the fund was one of many initiatives to help over 133 million Nigerians escape poverty and other humanitarian challenges.
The minister also requested the foundation’s financial and technical assistance in order to accomplish the mission of rescuing millions of Nigerians from poverty and addressing the numerous humanitarian issues that exist all over the nation.
She said, “We have a huge task on our hands. As we speak now, over 16 million Nigerians are affected by humanitarian crises, either man-made or natural disasters. Of course, security issues and pockets of unrest in different areas have not made this any better.
“Other natural disasters like the flooding, which we are presently going through, and the opening of a dam in another country, which will have its effect on Nigeria, are another call for attention to ensure that people are catered for.
“And then we have these unrests in all the neighbouring countries—in Cameroon, in the southern part of Cameroon—that have over 46,000 refugees coming into Nigeria. So there are over 36,000 in Cross River. We have a whole lot in Taraba and Benue along that border.”
She told her guests that the government was also dealing with other crises in Niger, with people coming to Sokoto, Kano, Katsina, among others.”
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“This is in addition to the Nigerians that are refugees in this country and the migrants that were trying to go through Niger and Libya and got stocked around the border. So it’s a whole lot as it concerns the humanitarian crises and what we need to deal with as a ministry.
“But now the bigger one is here, which is poverty alleviation. The last statistics done by the Bureau of Statistics, says that about 133 million Nigerians are poor; that’s multi-dimensional poverty, and then about 70 million of these people are extremely poor.
“So, they’re living below $1.95 per day. The President is committed to the SDG, which is raising these people out of poverty by 2030, and we need your help. We need your help! That’s a lot of work, and I just thought it was important to get you to the table at the foundational stage,” Edu stated.
On what the ministry would need, she said, “We would need a lot of technical help. Technical help to see that we can draw a baseline and set the agenda, and come up with programmes and projects that can be implemented to lift people out of poverty while addressing humanitarian needs.
“Secondly, we would also need lots of financial help in terms of supporting programmes, supporting processes, and helping with implementation. It starts with one of the innovations we want to put on board, which is the Presidential Humanitarian and Poverty Alleviation Trust Fund.”
The minister said the government would need to be able to go full-blown into a robust resource mobilisation, a move that could help it pull together funding into one basket.
“This will be used to address both the humanitarian crises and the poverty alleviation programmes and projects without necessarily going through the bureaucratic bottlenecks of government,” Edu stated, as her guests pledged to support the humanitarian ministry and Nigeria
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