AgriHub.com

Presidency claims
African Development
Bank report indicting
Nigerian government in
fight against poverty is
‘political’ The AfDB report said
poverty has risen in
Nigeria. In what has become a
norm with the Goodluck
Jonathan administration
to discountenance local
and international
independent assessments that appear unfavourable
to the government, the
Presidency on Saturday
claimed that the African
Development Bank (AfDB)
’s report on Nigeria’s poverty reduction efforts
was false.
The Special Adviser to the
President on Media and
Publicity, Reuben Abati,
said the report was “devoid of truth and
political.”
The AfDB, in its annual
report titled African
Economic Outlook, said
poverty has worsened since 1996 and through
11 years of the Peoples
Democratic Party, PDP,
rule.
“The proportion of people
(Nigerians) living below the national poverty line
has worsened from 65.5
per cent in 1996 to 69.0
per cent in 2010,” the
report said.
The PDP has ruled Nigeria since 1999, 11 of the 15
years covered by the AfDB
report.
The report follows others
by other regional and
global organisations including the World Bank
that were also denounced
by the Jonathan
administration.
The World Bank had
stated in its ‘Nigeria Economic Report’ released
in May that “Poverty rates
remain high in Nigeria,
particularly in rural areas.
These rates declined
between 2003-2004 and 2009- 2010, although not
nearly as fast as would be
expected from the pace of
economic growth in the
country,” the World Bank
said in May, 2013.” “While the officially
reported growth rates of
GDP well exceed
population growth in the
country, the pace of
poverty reduction does not, this implies that the
number of poor Nigerians
living below the poverty
line has grown
measurably,” the report
stated. The AfDB in its report also
faulted efforts by the
Nigerian government led
by President Goodluck
Jonathan to fight poverty .
“Nigeria’s prospect of halving poverty by 2015
seems weak,” the report
stated.
While questioning the
AfDB report, Mr. Abati said
that it was inconceivable that AfDB’s report came
barely a month after the
United Nations gave an
award to Nigeria for its
efforts at reducing poverty
significantly in the country.
He recalled that the Food
and Agricultural
Organisation (FAO), a UN
body, at its 38th Session in
Rome in late June gave an award to Nigeria as one of
the nations that made
significant progress in
reducing hunger.
The Minister of Agriculture,
Akinwumi Adesina, represented President
Goodluck Jonathan in
receiving the award on
behalf of the government,
he stated. Mr. Adesina
presented the award to the president during a
Federal Executive Council
(FEC) meeting.
Mr. Abati said that such a
negative report from the
AfDB some weeks after the FAO award was
“suspicious and laced with
falsehood and political’’.