Nigeria: Govt Plans to Lift 35m Nigerians Out of Poverty in Five Years

The Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Prince Clem Agba has stated that the federal government planned to take 35 million Nigerians out of poverty through the National Development Plan (NDP) 2021- 2025.

Speaking at the 2021 African Statistics Day celebration in Abuja, he said the plan also envisaged broad-based economic growth of about 5 per cent on average as well as create about 21 million full time jobs.

He said the NDP would also seek to increase the federal government’s net revenue at all levels to 15 per cent of GDP by 2025.

The minister said, “The Plan seeks to achieve these laudable goals in the medium term by expanding economic growth, growing an inclusive economy, leveraging on its young workforce and enhancing execution capacity at the national and sub-national levels.”

He said the plan envisions Nigeria being a leading industrialising and reforming nation in Africa, that will focus on building its institutional capacity and capability as well as fostering a private sector-led growth to help address the critical issues of job and wealth creation and poverty reduction.

Agba said,”Nigeria has an enabling investment climate and business environment, underpinned by a motivated, capacitated, well-resourced, world-class civil service that drives open, transparent, high performance governance at all levels.

“The country is now moving decisively towards the reforms required to unlock local content development, sub-national economic diversification, competitiveness and growth, making moderate, incremental progress in poverty reduction and job creation in the medium-term.”

Also speaking at the occasion, Statistician-General/Chief Executive, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Dr. Simon Harry, said the need to produce high quality sociocultural statistics for Africa’s regional and economic transformation cannot be overemphasized.

He said the 2021 celebration was in line with an aspect of the vision of the present administration, which is devoted to raising awareness on the importance of reliable statistical production processes and usage for evidence based policy decisions.

He expressed satisfaction that Nigeria had over the years taken advantage of the declaration to promote the use and production of statistics.

He said, “I must commend the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) for the consistent and efficient arrangement it has been making to ensure that all African countries celebrate this important day with some common activities through the use of a general theme. In this connection, perhaps it is pertinent to mention that the choice for this year’s theme, “Modernization of National Statistical System to Support Sociocultural Development in Africa is timely in view of the important role statistics plays in the current development efforts of African Countries.”

He said sociocultural integration will enhance economic growth and development adding that it remains a key strategy for strengthening intra-regional trade, and expected to produce considerable economic gains for Africa.

He added that the progress of sociocultural integration must be supported by high quality, timely and comparable social statistics.

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