Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) has listed six vital poverty reduction mechanisms into the 2016 federal budget which President Muhammadu Buhari which he said the National Assembly is now set to debate.
The Vice President who spoke today when a delegation of Reckitt Benckiser West Africa, a household care products’ company visited him in his office at Aso Villa, said that there are six social protection programmes of the Buhari administration for which funds have been allocated in the 2016 budget.
He told the delegation led by the company’s West Africa Managing Director, Mr. Rahul Murgai and the Chairman in Nigeria, Chief Olu Falomo that the six protection programmes include ‘Teach Nigeria’ where 500,000 graduates would be hired as teachers.
Others are Youth Employment and Empowerment where between 300,000 and 500,000 youths would go through skills acquisition and vocational training; the Conditional Cash Transfer, where one million extremely poor Nigerians will receive N5000 monthly this year; Homegrown School Feeding where one meal a day would be served to public primary school children across the country; Free Education for tertiary education in which 100,000 students of Science, Technology, Engineering would be involved, and Mathematics and the Micro-Credit Scheme that will give N60,000 one time soft loans to market women, and artisans.
“We are dealing with the issues of poverty with the 2016 Budget that is currently being debated,” the Vice President stressed.
He said that in a country where more than 110 million Nigerians are extremely poor, there are bound to be challenges including about 110,000 deaths yearly from Diarrhea.
The company had earlier discussed its ‘Safe the Children Initiative,’ a Corporate Social Responsibility programme designed to curb the deaths of Nigerian children caused by Diarrhea with the Vice President.
Speaking earlier, Mr. Murgai said Reckitt Benckiser which has been doing business in Nigeria for several decades wants to ensure that the people of Nigeria are healthier and happier. He said the company is worried about deaths from diarrhea and has set aside about N1.2 billion to fight it in Nigeria.
Also today the Vice President received a delegation from the Twelve-Twelve Polo and Turf Club, Abuja led by Mallam Murtala Aliyu, the Club’s Advisory Board Chairman. [myad]
