''We have moved 10m Nigerians out of poverty''- FG

Minister of Budget and National Planning, Sen. Udoma Udo Udoma, has said that the Buhari-led government has moved 10 million Nigerians out of poverty. Udoma stated this while speaking on arrangements for the 24th Nigerian Economic Summit (NES#24) held at the conference room of the ministry in Abuja today Tuesday September 18th.

He said federal government had taken steps to move over 10 million Nigerians from poverty to prosperity as one of the key priorities of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan, ERGP by investing in the people.

According to Udoma, the government had provided 8.96million school children under the Home Grown School Feeding Programme; over 297,000 poor and vulnerable Nigerians supported with cash transfer of N5,000 successfully disbursed more than 308,000 loans of N50,000 and above under the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) and 200,000 Young Unemployed Graduates Empowered through the N-Power scheme , while over 308,000 had been selected for consideration for the second batch.

‘‘We have taken steps towards moving our people from Poverty to prosperity. Indeed, one of the key priorities of the ERGP is investing in our people. That objective has been behind many Government programmes, particularly the Social Investment Programme. Under this programme, we have empowered millions of Nigerian youths, women and children. To combat hunger and achieve food security, we have raised capital provisions for agriculture from N8.8billion in 2015 to N149.2billion in the 2018 budget.

Over N82billion has been disbursed as credit to more than 350,000 farmers under the Anchor Borrowers’ programme. 14 moribund fertilizer blending plants have been revitalized through the Presidential Fertilizer Initiative (PFI), with a total capacity of 2.3million metric tons of NPK fertilizer. Nigeria’s milled rice production has increased by about 60% and since 2016 eight new rice mills have been brought into production'' he said