Poverty, economic crisis deepening everyday, we must act fast — Osinbajo

Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo says every single day “the poverty situation in Nigeria and economic crisis and distortions are deepening”

The Professor of Law explains that Nigerians are getting poorer daily and as such the government “must act fast” to rescue the situation.

Laolu Akande, the vice-president’s spokesman, quotes Osinbajo as saying this at the first year ministerial performance review retreat.

At the retreat, ministers gave account of their performance in the last one year.

Osinbajo, who said the coronavirus pandemic has affected the living standard of Nigerians, charged ministers to expedite action on the N2.3 trillion stimulus package designed by the government to mitigate the effect of the crisis on the economy.

“We are already in Day 67 since the plan. Nothing is going to happen by magic, we have to simply do this stuff,” he said.

“We have to ensure that we have the money and ensure that day by day, we are measuring our achievements and trying to ensure that we do the things that we need to do. And we simply are not favoured by time, every single day the poverty situation and the economic distortions deepen.”

Osinbajo said the federal government has enumerated four million farmers under the mass agriculture programme.

He said the government will build 300,000 homes across the country under the mass housing programme, adding that the prices of the houses will not exceed N2 million each.

“There is one which is ongoing by the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing, and the one under the Family Homes Fund is also supervised by the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing,” he said.

“The mass agriculture programme is one where we envisaged that we will be engaging many farmers. So far, we have enumerated at least 4 million farmers.

“So, these are farmers who are tied to their lands and we have the geo-statistics that shows where their land is and we have about 4 million of them. And we expect that with each state contributing acreage for farming, we will be able to do significant numbers.

“The plan is designed in such a way that in each one of the programmes, we are engaging as many Nigerians as possible. The expected outcome for agriculture, even if each farmer employs an additional person, this will result in an additional 4 million jobs and even more jobs along the value chain. We also will be looking at developing rural roads to reduce post-harvest losses.”

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