By Ahmed Idris
The federal government would continue to drive initiatives to get more Nigerians out of poverty and also improve the country’s human capital development indices, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, said on Thursday.
Osinbajo said this during a meeting of the National Economic Council’s Human Capital Development Core Working Group at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.
He said government was committed to driving initiatives to accelerate human capital development in the country because “lifting our people out of poverty is a crucial agenda towards attaining intended developmental outcomes.”
“Poverty as we know is both a cause and consequence of some of what we are looking at in our human capital development deficit. Really, I think we need to focus a lot more on some of the more creative ways of getting our people out of poverty. And of course, we have some social investment programmes, we are looking at some of the examples of what India did, some have been tried and tested in such huge populations.
“I think there is a need for us to sensitize our people to why it is that we need to get a large segment of our people out of poverty. Recently, we’ve been launching the TraderMoni scheme, which is basically giving credits to petty traders across the country in the markets and all that.
“We must do even more in terms of giving credits and whatever assistance and support to people, obviously the more money people have, the better it is for them, so they can apply their little resources to some of what we are expected to do to improve human capital development,” he said.
The Vice President also highlighted the importance of improving data collection at all levels so as to ensure effective tracking of human capital development outcome areas in the states.
The Vice President said NEC would ensure there is high-level representation across the states, specially focused on human capital development.
The meeting was attended by Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufai; Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole; Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed; Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige; and the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma.
Representatives from development partners such as the World Bank, Aliko Dangote of the Dangote Foundation, DFID and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also attended the meeting, and commended the federal government for its efforts in accelerating the country’s human capital development indices.
