The Federal Government has said that no fewer than 8.3 million Nigerians based in the northern region are in dire need of humanitarian assistance.
The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr Betta Edu, disclosed this in a statement made available to newsmen on Sunday (today) through her media aide, Rasheed Zubair.
According to the Minister, the concerned people are located in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States.
Edu said the figure is part of the total 16 million Nigerians affected by various humanitarian crises, with the three states worse hit.
She noted that apart from the North-East, Benue in the North/Central had been tagged the capital of humanitarian crises in Nigeria by the United Nations.
“We have a huge task on our hands; as we speak now, over 16m Nigerians are affected by humanitarian crises, either man-made or natural disaster, with over 8.3m of them based in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe.
”Several states in the North Central and others spread across the country.
“The UN said Benue had become the humanitarian need capital in Nigeria, and as such, a lot of work needs to be done in the humanitarian angle,” she said.
According to her, one of President Bola Tinubu’s administration agendas is to ensure that poverty is alleviated in Nigeria in line with SDG goal one.
She added: “The president is coming up with a very robust program to lift Nigerians out of poverty.
“Our work is to see how we can get those in poverty out and those on the verge of getting into poverty increase to social safety to protect them from falling into poverty.
“In a couple of weeks, we will be fully launching into this plans to take over 136 million Nigerians out of poverty as implementation has started to help cushion the effects of the fuel subsidy removal.”
She said the ministry had come up with innovative ways of thorough verification of the social register for accuracy and transparency.
While noting that the ministry will also accommodate more persons thereafter, Edu said the ministry will be working with the World Bank after getting approval from the President to begin the Conditional Cash Transfer to Nigerians.
The minister promised to upgrade, rejig and expand the social safety net programme to accommodate more people through a transparent process.
She said: “We want to increase the Social Safety Net for Nigerians in a transparent manner by counting the numbers together just as we counted COVID-19 cases using a digitalised system.
“We are very conscious of the fact that Mr President’s passion and true intentions are to ensure that we can lift Nigerians out of poverty.
“Party politics is over, now is time for governance, President Tinubu is a president for everyone irrespective of political party.”
She therefore assured Nigerians that the ministry would soon come up with an accurate and acceptable social register to curb the challenge associated with disparity in the register.
“Ministry would soon come up with a more acceptable Social Register, one that will be verified, validated.
“It will also be expanded to include those who should be there while taking off those who no longer belong within that bracket.
“We will also work with all tiers of government as well as various communities to identify persons eligible for the scheme,” she added.
