The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Beta Edu, said on Tuesday that the 2024 budget to fight poverty in the country was too small and would achieve limited results.
The Minister and heads of agencies under the ministry appeared before the Joint National Assembly Committee of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation in Abuja to defend the proposals.
She told the committee, chaired by Senator Idiat Adebule that the Budget Office allocated an overhead ceiling of N532.5billion to the ministry, explaining that this represented a 28% increase over the votes for 2023 to cushion the effects of inflation.
However, Edu stated that the 28% increase in the overhead ceiling was not commensurate with the 27.33% inflationary trend in the country.
She also said the capital budget ceiling was reduced from N3.7bn in 2022 to N1.3bn in 2023, representing a 71% reduction.
She noted that, while in the 2024 budget, the capital ceiling was slightly raised to N1.5bn, “it does not in any way match the mandate of the ministry’s headquarters in order to shrink poverty in Nigeria.”
Edu spoke further, “Simply put, there was an over 71% reduction between 2022 and 2023; so the minimal increase between 2023 and 2024 does not in any way match with the mandate, which we have been given and what is expected of us.
“The burden lies on us to actually tackle the issue of poverty with sincerity. One thing you can take from myself and my team working under the guardian of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is that he truly wants Nigerians to be out of poverty.
“Except the budget is appropriate for it, we would be completely unable to meet that mandate.
“It will be words that would not be matched with actions.”
The minister also informed the lawmakers of an omission from the budget, the Humanitarian and Poverty Eradication Trust Fund, recently approved by the Federal Executive Council to serve as the funding source for various special poverty alleviation projects.
But, she said the Fund was committed in the budget.
She stated, “This Trust is expected to have a contribution from the Federal Government; 30% counterpart-funding, which is supposed to come from donor agencies as well as development partners.
“We also have 30% coming from the private sector, and then 10% from other very innovative funds of resource mobilisation for which we have already started engagements in the over 111 days in office.
“We have been engaging massively for these funds to come into Nigeria to support the implementation of programmes which we will be implementing with you at the front burner, by reaching out to your constituents.”
Edu told the committee that, to be able to attract the other donors, the government must first put its own percentage funding on the table.
When asked whether her ministry made a case for the Trust Fund at the budget planning stage, Edu replied that it was presented to the Ministry of Budget, but was removed from the returned proposals.
She also said she had engaged the budget office on the matter and urged the committee to intervene to resolve it.
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