FG Dismisses Poverty Report On Nigeria

The Federal Government has brushed off the Brookings report addressing Nigeria as the country with the largest number of extreme poverty in early 2018.

In a report by Brookings Institution on Monday, India which had occupied the number one spot for a while, was overtaken by Nigeria as the country with the poorest citizens.

However, the Minister of Trade and Investment, Okechukwu Enelamah, while addressing the State House reporters on Wednesday said the statistical measure used for the report might have been compiled when Nigeria was in recession, hence there is no need to be disturbed.

“I think first, we need to understand when we get these reports that there are reports that are lagging in indicators which means, people are reporting on history,” Enelamah said.

“So, when you get reports from Brooking Institution or all sorts of people, you need to look at the context. Somebody may have written a report when we were in a recession.

“Remember that if you are in a recession, what it means is that even though, your population is growing, people don’t stop procreating, your growth fact, which means that in theory depending on how they run those numbers, you will be going the other way. There is absolutely no question that there an urgency to create employment in Nigeria.

“What I can tell you, with certainty based on one’s background in business and economics, is that if we complete the things on infrastructure and you implement these reports we are doing, that is what I mean by a leading indicator, poverty will go down.

“There is no magic to it. But you have to do it first, you have put in the infrastructure, you have to implement the economic programme which is what will create the opportunities, they don’t drop from the sky.

“So, I think we should roll up our sleeves as a people and do the work because, if we don’t do it, our people continue to bear children obviously, they would get poorer. So, I don’t think we should kill ourselves that poverty is something just happen.

“I think it comes out of the urgent need we have as a country which is why we are focusing as a government to make sure that we create the enabling environment, the infrastructure that is required to create opportunities for our people and I believe that will happen in the process of time.”