To lift one million poor people out of extreme poverty in a country with 180 million inhabitants, the most populous in Africa. A prior, in carrying out this old promise of campaign, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari gives a sword in the water in this country which counts more than 50 million poor living on less than a dollar a day.
$ 25 per month for those living on less than $ 1 a day
But to take a closer look at it, Nigeria has just begun a genuine struggle against poverty. The first African power has just launched the year 2017, granting a minimum income to the most deprived people in the country.
Recording operations, organized in the most remote areas of Nigeria, a vast country of nearly one million square kilometers. It involves identifying and recording in a digitized, centralized file, the recipients of the $ 25 that the government will pay each month.
In the rest of the procedure, the persons already registered are automatically opened a bank account on which they will receive their “per diem” monthly. An SMS sent later will confirm the effectiveness of the transfer made by the central state, determined to fight poverty.
In a report published in 2012, Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) estimated at the time that nearly 60% of the 160 million Nigerian population (in 2012) lived on less than a dollar a day. Yet, Nigeria has relied on its position as the main oil producer on the continent to rise to the top of the African powers.
5 million poor will have minimum income in 2021
Victim of the “curse of wealth”, the country plagued by corruption, struggling with transnational organized crime and armed extremist groups, is struggling to start sharing national wealth among its 200 inhabitants per square kilometer. As a result, the country evolves at two speeds between a sometimes extremely wealthy minority and a majority who are often extremely poor.
In this regard, it is worth recalling this definition of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). “A person lives in extreme poverty if they do not have the income they need to meet their basic food needs .”
Aware of the situation in his country, Muhammadu Buhari, a candidate for the presidency, had made the fight against poverty his battleground. The strongest measure before its election in May 2015 is the announcement of a guaranteed monthly income for the poorest people in the country.
The first phase of the anti-poverty program that it has just launched aims to grant this monthly aid to 1 million people by the end of 2017. Ultimately, the target for 2021 is to reach 5 million Of beneficiaries with an envelope of $ 1.5 billion. This is certainly ridiculous given the number of poor people in the country, but it gives hope for better tomorrow to millions of people.
Provided by: La Tribune
