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Nigeria Has 74m Poor People -Kpakol

Posted by Elvis on April 27, 2009 at 8:53pm
CALABAR ––Dr. Magnus Kpakol, National Coordinator of the National Poverty Eradication Programme(NAPEP), has said 74 million Nigerians are poor.He said the figure, which was as at December 2008, dropped by one million from the 75 million in 2007.He made this known in a paper titled, “NAPEP Programmes As Enabler For Rapid Economic Development In The South South Region,” presented at the just-concluded South South Economic Summit in Calabar.He said the population of the country’s poor was 80 million in 1999.Kpakol, a Senior Special Assistant to the President on Poverty Alleviation, said that the poverty prevalence was more in the northern part of the country.According to him, the poverty rate in North West geo-political zone was 72.2 per cent of its population while in North East, it is 71.2 per cent of the population.“The percentage is 67 of the population in North Central,” he added and disclosed that the South East has the lowest poor population of 26.7 per cent.“The zone is followed by South South where the poor constitutes 35.1 per cent of its population and South West with 43.1 per cent,’’ he said.The NAPEP Coordinator attributed the poverty index in the country to weak local economy and said that the poverty rate would reduce “when we have rule of law and good governance.”Other factors that would also elevate people from the poverty stratum include, “strong and high quality development growth and mass participation in economic development,” he added.He challenged local government councils to commit N1 million into micro lending in each community in their areas.Kpakol stated that the reduction of the size of the poor population from 80 million in 1999 to 74 million in 2009 was due to various poverty alleviation programmes embarked by various governments.He charged states and local governments in the South South to evolve a common poverty reduction programme.
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