POLITICS

Poverty reason for Nigeria’s insecurity – PGF DG

Salihu Lukman, Director-General of the Progressives Governors Forum, has said poverty behind Nigeria’s insecurity.

He said this in a paper he delivered in Abuja titled, ‘Poverty and Existential Problems of Nigeria’. According to Lukman, “return to peaceful coexistence and moving Nigeria forward under the leadership of our party (All Progressives Congress) is dependent on the capacity of our governments to lift Nigerians out of poverty”.

“Therefore, we need to engage the disturbing issue of high levels of poverty in Nigeria beyond the narrow prism of politics. “

“In our case in Nigeria, beyond our self-inflicted ethnic and religious conflicts, poverty is also at the root of all the kidnappings, abductions and banditry.

“The problem of high incidence of poverty in Nigeria has been our reality for decades, which no Nigerian can deny.

“Year after year, both governmental and non-governmental, including multilateral, institutions continue to remind us of the ugly reality of our high incidence of poverty.

“Just recently, the World Bank released its annual report on Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2020: Reversal of Fortune.

“The report indicated that 2,969,158 Nigerians are living in extreme poverty and a total of 94,470,535 million are below the poverty line of $1.90 or about N700 per day.

“It also highlighted sadly that Nigeria has the largest population of poor people, accounting for 20 per cent of people living in poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, with a further projection that the impact of Covid-19 pandemic was on the economy will increase the number of people living below the poverty line to more than 100 million by 2022.”

  • Bayo Adeyemo

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