• Exists only on paper, not doing enough –PANDEF, NNPP
• We’re on course to address poverty –FG
From Okwe Obi, Abuja
The appointment of Nentawe Goshwe Yilwatda and Yusuf Tanko Sununu as ministers of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction by President Bola Tinubu courted pomp and expectations from stakeholders and the vulnerable.
Their appointment was due to suspension of Betta Edu, and the national coordinator of the National Social Investment Programme (NSIPA), Halima Shehu, over alleged misapplication of funds.
But since Yilwatda and Sununu came on board early November last year, little or nothing has been done to cushion the hardship of many Nigerians.
This is the first time that the ministry would be having two male ministers since its creation in 2019 by the past administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Upon assumption of office, Yelwatda admitted that the ministry had image deficit and needed to be deodarised by good, pragmatic policies and implementation.
He said: “We have an image issue that we have to address. We have a trust deficit within the ministry and the general public.
“We must clean those image issues. We must address the issues and trust deficit before the international community.
“In doing that, we need to ensure that we bring in transparency. And part of the measures of transparency is to get most of our policies automated so that what we doing can be visited and be given visibility in the first place.”
Since the promises were made, there has been no clear-cut initiatives to clean up the polluted environment and to reduce the high rate of hunger in the country.
In fact, no word was heard from the ministers on the recent stampedes that claimed over 30 lives in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja, Oyo and Anambra states respectively.
In his reaction, national publicity secretary and spokesman for the Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), Dr Obiuwevbi Ominimini, frowned at the swelling poverty in the country. He pointed out that the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction only exist in other parts of Nigeria.
He added that the people in the Niger Delta do not feel the impact of that ministry, claiming that they only hear on television, radio and social media that the ministry shares foodstuffs, money to people in other parts of the country.
He said: “The Niger Delta that is the capital of poverty in the world does not partake in the activities of that ministry. For example, when I say the Niger Delta is the headquarters of poverty in the world, I mean that we have abundant resources such as gas and crude oil. However, we do not have the impact of the extraction of these resources.
“Instead what we have is environmental degradation and bastardisation of the ecosystem. The people of the Niger Delta, their main area of the economy is farming and fishing.
“Today, we can no longer farm and fish because the ecosystem has been destroyed. The underground water is being polluted as a result of oil exploitation.
“We cannot also drink our surface water like from the streams and rivers because it is polluted.”
He alleged that the International Oil Companies ( IOCs) were doing nothing about it.
“One would have expected that the Federal Government should have been a rallying point to ensure that there is environmental clean up.
“Government has done nothing about it. It looks as if we are just shouting to deaf ears. So, we spend more money in this country in order to survive. For example, we drink sachet water and bottle water and we have water by our side.
“We can see the volume of trailers coming to Southern Nigeria with cows everyday. See the numbers of cows that are being killed in Warri, Yanagoa, Benin, Ugelli, Port Harcourt, Calabar Uyo, very voluminous, because it serves as protein to our people when we have river by outside.
“The people of the Niger Delta are dying everyday because of the substance we inhale from the gas flaring. The Federal Government is interested in the penalty paid by the IOCs for flaring gas.
“One would have expected that penalty should be declared and used for the people of the Niger Delta to build hospitals to solve the problem of gas flaring. Rather this money is kept in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and being used by the Federal Government to pay salaries.
“During the regime of Buhari, the money was used to pay salaries while the people in the Niger Delta are dying.
“I want to say without mincing words that the Federal Government is committing economic genocide and physical genocide to the people of the Niger Delta.
“In the area of economy, we have been excluded from becoming major players in the oil industry.
“In order to stop poverty in Nigeria, we need to public and civil servants to stop stealing our resources. There are individuals richer than the states.
“All the houses and estates you see in Abuja and Lagos belong to public servants who do businesses and pay no tax to the government. We have people who steal a lot, return little and walk freely.”
He suggested that “we need to industrialize Nigeria. Industrialisation of any nation cannot come without viable electricity.
“Government must solve the problem of electricity in Nigeria because nobody can run a factory with diesel for a long time. Until Nigeria solves the problem of electricity, there will be no development because it is the mother of all inventions.
“Why should Nigerian government be destroying artisanal refinery when they can formulate legal framework on the ground to enable the people to register and produce for us. It will generate employment. Rather than destroying them, government should put up a framework to regulate the sector.”
Also, National Publicity Secretary of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), Ladipo Johnson, contended that the government was not doing enough enough to tackle poverty head long.
Johnson said: “This government, I do not think it is doing enough. They must do more to ensure that they bring about programmes to bring about a more favourable environment along with targeted sector of the economy.”
He suggested that the government should invest handsomely in sports as viable option to reduce poverty.
“Look at sports. It is not being treated as if it is a viable business. If not government will invest more into it.
“Encourage more of the youths to involve at different levels so that the country can benefit from it. So, the government has to do more.
“They have to think outside the box with regards to monetary and fiscal policies. They must find an equilibrium. It is a holistic approach that must be adopted by this government to address poverty.
“It is critical when you look at the economic indices that we have at the moment with the poverty index, inflationary trend and devaluation of the naira. All these things make it critical that the government at all levels have to fashion out ways to ensure that they cushion the impact on the masses.
“They must also begin to look for ways to train and retrain people who are out of work. You will find out that there are people who are pensioners who cannot cope anymore. They do not receive anymore. They need to fit in to the economic reality of the country.”
However, the Director of Information and Public Relations in the ministry, Illiya Rhoda Ishaku, in a telephone conversation, assured that the National Social Investment Programme (NSIPA) would be revived to retrieve millions of Nigerians out of poverty.
Ishaku said: “They will still resuscitate all the programmes. I cannot say how soon but very soon. You know there is a new national coordinator of NSIPA and they are trying to iron out things so that they will soon start fully.
“They will soon meet with journalists. Just exercise patience.”