Campaign seeks to reducing worsening poverty in Nigeria

As political activities towards the 2023 general elections heat up, a pro-poor development organization, PUSH AFRICA, has launched a nation-wide initiative to redirect the attention of politicians and policymakers to the urgent challenges posed by escalating poverty in the country.

The initiative tagged ‘DO-ONE-THING CAMPAIGN’ is designed to advocate and support the Nigerian government’s effort to reduce the number of poor people in the country by half by the year 2030.

It is also directed at supporting similar anti-poverty initiatives by development agencies and private sector institutions.

According to Doris Egberamen, Founder of PUSH AFRICA, a key objective of the campaign is to focus the attention of prospective leaders who are aspiring to vie for various political offices to give priority attention to the raging increase in the number of poor people in the country and to show to the Nigerians that they have a practical and actionable plan to tackle the pervasive and deepening poverty in their various constituencies.

She explained that a key component of the campaign is to create a platform where Nigerians most hit by poverty can tell their own stories as it affects them so as to show the depth and harsh realities they live with.

According to her, the projection is that by exposing the vulnerable conditions in which they live, the nation’s elected and appointed leaders will be encouraged to take serious and actionable steps towards solving the problem.

PUSH AFRICA lamented that statistics show that about 95.1 million Nigerians – close to half of the country’s population still live below the poverty line.

““This current situation is disturbing and if we are not deliberate about this issue, the statistics will keep getting worse and the consequences in terms of negative socio-economic impact and underdevelopment will keep on the rise,” she said.

She added that, “For the sake of our current and future generations, we cannot allow this to happen. As an organization, we are indeed disturbed about this hike hence the urgent call on all stakeholders to do something drastic and practical about this poverty pandemic in this country.”

While acknowledging the current administration’s efforts in the terms of the will shown by the President, Muhammadu Buhari and the enormous work done so far, PUSH AFRICA believes that there is still so much work to be done and there is a need to troubleshoot the current efforts to find out what is working and what is not.

“We need to check how well the solutions being administered are working and detect problematic areas that needs more attention”, she stressed.

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