*80 Million Nigerians are Poor
ABUJA – 80 million Nigerians are still leaving below the poverty line, Senior Special Assistant to the President and National Coordinator of National Poverty Eradication Programme, Dr. Magnus Kpakol, said yesterday.
This came as Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Josephine Anenih, noted that poverty had continued to claim the lives of hundreds of thousands of women in child birth each year, adding that most violence and destruction of lives and property in the country were a result of poverty.
Dr Kpakol, who disclosed this at a one day workshop with NAPEP management and state coordinators and secretaries, said of the number, Lagos State had the highest percentage of 62.
His words: “In a country with a population of 150 million, 80 million are living in poverty, we need to do something about it. On our own, whether we are in government or not, we have to play a role in some one’s life, this has to change.”
He called on state governments to put money into creating small scale businesses, saying “they have to build private sectors and it is only by doing so that poverty will reduce drastically.
“As we can see, so many of them were used during election but if they had something doing, they would not have participated in the recent post-election crisis. We need to have a strong economy that people can get jobs. By so doing, we will find ourselves moving forward.”
