There’re more extremely poor people in Nigeria than India – Atiku

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar says Nigeria has just overtaken India as the world’s capital of extreme poverty a country that has six times Nigeria’ population.

Atiku dropped the bombshell at the weekend in his keynote address when he picked the Silverbird’s 2017 man of the year award in Lagos, noting that according to the World Poverty Clock, that there are more extremely poor people in Nigeria than there are in India.

“It may sound simplistic, but if Nigeria can assemble a leadership focused on getting us out of this Malthusian trap by gradually reversing the trend where population growth exceeds GDP growth, many of these challenges we are currently facing will slowly but surely fade away,”

According to the former APC chieftain, When people do not have jobs and the means to start a business are beyond their reach, they are incrementally much more likely to engage in criminal behaviours like terrorism, kidnapping, militancy and armed robbery.

“According to the African Development Bank, in 2017, 18 African countries grew their Gross Domestic Product above 5%. Nigeria, which was number one in 2014, was not amongst these nations. We must figure out what has happened in the intervening years between 2014 and 2018 and fix what went wrong.

“What happened to brilliant initiatives like the YouWIN programme which gave Nigerian youths the training and funding to start their own businesses?”

The former vice president also argued that Nigeria needs to be restructured, in order to fix “Nigeria’s broken systems and not just a campaign gimmick that we fish out of our magic hats and deny after we have gotten what we want.”

“Let me say this: The Restructuring that I, Atiku Abubakar, envisions, will see no state receive less money from the federation account than it currently does. I hope that will ease the anxieties of oppose restructuring. Restructuring will not cheat you. It will free you.

“When I was in some who government, we reduced recurrent expenditure by introducing the monetisation policy and by privatising many government enterprises, especially those that were consuming resources without generating revenue. Those policies have been bastardized today and we have seen a ballooning of our recurrent expenditure and shrinkage of our capital expenditure. We must return to the basics.”

Abubakar noted that the nation cannot spend 70 per cent of its budget on recurrent expenditure at a time Nigeria has more unemployed or underemployed people than the entire population of the Republic of Cameroon.

“We have to enact laws to prevent leaders from diverting public funds from the public health sector to the treatment of the elite in the best hospitals abroad. If you can afford it from your own private resources, then pay for it. But do not make the tax payer pay for it.

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar says Nigeria has just overtaken India as the world’s capital of extreme poverty a country that has six times Nigeria’ population.

Atiku dropped the bombshell at the weekend in his keynote address when he picked the Silverbird’s 2017 man of the year award in Lagos, noting that according to the World Poverty Clock, that there are more extremely poor people in Nigeria than there are in India.

“It may sound simplistic, but if Nigeria can assemble a leadership focused on getting us out of this Malthusian trap by gradually reversing the trend where population growth exceeds GDP growth, many of these challenges we are currently facing will slowly but surely fade away,”

According to the former APC chieftain, When people do not have jobs and the means to start a business are beyond their reach, they are incrementally much more likely to engage in criminal behaviours like terrorism, kidnapping, militancy and armed robbery.

“According to the African Development Bank, in 2017, 18 African countries grew their Gross Domestic Product above 5%. Nigeria, which was number one in 2014, was not amongst these nations. We must figure out what has happened in the intervening years between 2014 and 2018 and fix what went wrong.

“What happened to brilliant initiatives like the YouWIN programme which gave Nigerian youths the training and funding to start their own businesses?”

The former vice president also argued that Nigeria needs to be restructured, in order to fix “Nigeria’s broken systems and not just a campaign gimmick that we fish out of our magic hats and deny after we have gotten what we want.”

“Let me say this: The Restructuring that I, Atiku Abubakar, envisions, will see no state receive less money from the federation account than it currently does. I hope that will ease the anxieties of oppose restructuring. Restructuring will not cheat you. It will free you.

“When I was in some who government, we reduced recurrent expenditure by introducing the monetisation policy and by privatising many government enterprises, especially those that were consuming resources without generating revenue. Those policies have been bastardized today and we have seen a ballooning of our recurrent expenditure and shrinkage of our capital expenditure. We must return to the basics.”

Abubakar noted that the nation cannot spend 70 per cent of its budget on recurrent expenditure at a time Nigeria has more unemployed or underemployed people than the entire population of the Republic of Cameroon.

“We have to enact laws to prevent leaders from diverting public funds from the public health sector to the treatment of the elite in the best hospitals abroad. If you can afford it from your own private resources, then pay for it. But do not make the tax payer pay for it.