A few days after the federal government blamed governors for the rising spate of poverty in the country, the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) has responded, accusing President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration of turning Nigeria into “a killing field”, which has resulted in multidimensional poverty.
The NGF said the federal government has failed in its primary duty to provide security for the people, allowing banditry, kidnapping and terrorism to fester across the country.
The forum’s statement was made known in a statement released by Abdulrazaque Bello-Barkindo, the NGF Director of Media and Public Affairs. The statement said that insecurity has spread across all areas in Nigeria, including marketplaces and farmlands, preventing people from making a living and thereby plunging them into abject poverty.
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“First and foremost, the primary duty of any government is to ensure the security of lives and property, without which no sensible human activity takes place. But the federal government, which is responsible for the security of lives and property, has been unable to fulfill this covenant with the people, thus allowing bandits, insurgents, and kidnappers to turn the country into a killing field, maiming and abducting people, in schools market squares and even on their farmlands,” the NGF said.
The federal government had made its statement following a report released by the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS), which said that 133 million Nigerians are living in multidimensional poverty. On Wednesday, the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Clement Agba, said that from the report, poverty at 72 percent, is significantly higher in the rural areas of states, which means that the governors are not doing their job to alleviate poverty.
”And from our demographic, it shows that the greatest numbers of our people live in rural areas, but the governors are not working in the rural areas.
“They would rather build skyscrapers in a city where people will see and clap but the skyscrapers do not put food on the table,” Agba said.
The NGF said it’s folly for the federal government to push its blame on the states, given that security situation in the country has made it difficult for people to make a living. It said the statement is not only preposterous and without any empirical basis, but also very far from the truth.
“This dereliction of duty from the centre is the main reason why people have been unable to engage in regular agrarian activity and in commerce. Today, rural areas are insecure, markets are unsafe, surety of travels is improbable, and life for the common people generally is harsh and brutish.
“How does a minister whose government has been unable to ensure security, law, and order have the temerity to blame governors?” The governors said.
They also reminded the federal government of its promise to lift 100 million of Nigerians out of poverty. The NGF noted that for several months, the monthly federal allocation (FAAC) from the federal government to states has not been remitted by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), leaving states to depend on meager alternative means of revenue generation.
“Although the minister committed the folly of tarring all thirty-six governors with the same brush, there cannot be a one-size-fits-all reply to the minister’s misguided outburst.
“For example, it is the federal government that, in its campaign message in 2019, promised to take 100 million Nigerians out of poverty. Today, records show that more than 130 million Nigerians are living below the globally accepted poverty line of a dollar a day.
“Under the current administration that Mr Clement Agba is minister, the national cash cow, the NNPC, has failed to remit statutory allocations to states in several months. The situation had compelled governors to rely on other sources of revenue, like, the SFTAS program and other interventions anchored by the NGF, to fund states activities while monies budgeted for such federal ministries as Agriculture, Rural Development, and Humanitarian Affairs are not being deployed in the direction of the people.
“So, where is the minister getting his unverified facts and figures from? It is important to mention here that only this week, the House of Representatives asked the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Hajiya Sadiya Umar Farouk, to quit office if she was not ready to do her work of alleviating poverty in the land. This, in other words, is a resounding vote of no confidence on the ministers among whom Mr. Agba serves,” the NGF said.