Lifting Nigerians Out Of Poverty Requires Paradigm Shift – Speaker

By Oduyemi Odumade

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dr Tajudeen Abbas says lifting Nigerians out of poverty caused by the myriad of economic challenges will require a paradigm shift.

While addressing a delegation from the Civil Society Leaders Forum on Social Protection, which paid him a visit in his office, Dr Abbas said that the current challenges Nigerians are facing due to fuel subsidy removal would soon be history.

He called on Nigerians to see the current economic hardship as the natural effects of some tough decisions saying a level of difficulty had to set in before things could get better.

“Restructuring takes time as it has to get difficult before it gets better, and that this is the beginning. People need to understand that there will be difficulty along the way to better days,” the Speaker said.

Reacting to statistics presented before him by the forum on the place of Nigeria in the global poverty index and why conditional cash transfer should be seen as a veritable tool of achieving social protection, the Speaker assured the delegation of his readiness to partner the civil society to engineer lasting solutions to socio-economic challenges faced by Nigerians.

Dr Abbas also stressed the need for a shift from the old way of approaching policy issues with a view to achieving new results.

The leader of the delegation, Dr Otive Igbuzor outlined the challenges brought on poor Nigerians by the inability of successive administrations to prioritise social protection as a means of tackling poverty.

He also informed the Speaker that there are six key areas of concern that the 10th Assembly must urgently intervene in, using relevant legislative instruments, which included a permanent dialogue mechanism between civil society and the legislature; partnership on budget and policy issues; effective implementation of the Public Procurement Act (2007) as well as proper oversight of the National Social Investment Programmes Agency, among other measures.

Edited By Grace Namiji