Vice President Prof. Yemi Osinbajo on Wednesday said that the All Progressives Congress (APC) led government was working on a credible plan to get Nigeria out of poverty in spite of limited funds available to the country.
Osinbajo disclosed this at a town hall meeting tagged: ‘The Candidates’ organised by the MacArthur Foundation in collaboration with NTA and DARIA Media in Abuja.
He said that the APC administration was dealing with poverty in many ways including monthly payment of N5,000 to the poorest Nigerians, home grown school feeding programme and the Tradermoni, where market women are given N10,000 each to start business.
“As of 2012 Nigeria had 112 million people living in extreme poverty. Today Nigeria has about 86 million people who are poor but it is higher than India.
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“From 2010 to 2014 Nigeria earned the highest revenue in oil. Nigeria earned $383 billion. Poverty figure went from about 82 million people to about 112 million in 2012. That is the reason why we have the poverty problem.
“Unfortunately, with all this money we had poverty was not addressed, nothing was done about it.
“In three years of our own government $94 billion is what we made from oil revenue compared that to$383 billion, but we started the largest programme to tackle poverty in the history of this country,’’ he said.
He further mentioned that the government was feeding 9.2million children daily under the school feeding programme to address the issue of malnutrition.
He added that no credible beneficiary could be traced to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) SURE-P Fund.
Osinbajo also said that the APC was different from the PDP because the APC manifesto was about social development of the country.
Speaking on the issue of security, President Muhammadu Buhari, said that his administration has done a lot in addressing insecurity, especially the Boko Haram in the North-East.
“When this administration came in, Boko Haram was holding on to 17 local governments in the North-East. At this moment they are not holding any. They have only resorted to attacking soft targets.
“The best you can get about this administration in terms of fighting Boko Haram is that people are being returned to their various homes, which was not the case before.
He advised the media to do their thorough research on issues related to insecurity.
On the Disability Bill, Buhari said the document had yet to be forwarded to him.
(NAN)