On Thursday, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr Betta Edu, unveiled plans to establish the Presidential Humanitarian and Poverty Alleviation Trust Fund as part of measures aimed at lifting over 133 million Nigerians out of poverty and other humanitarian crises.
Dr. Edu, who disclosed this during an interactive session with the Country Director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mr. Jeremie Zoungrana, who was accompanied by Deputy Director, Health, Population, and Nutrition, Carolin Jehu-Appiah, solicited the Foundation’s technical and financial support towards achieving the feat.
She said: “We have a huge task on our hands; as we speak now, over 16 million Nigerians are affected by humanitarian crises, either man-made or natural disasters. Of course, security issues and pockets of unrest in different areas have not made this any better. Other natural disasters like the flooding, which we are presently going through, and the opening of a Dam in another country, which will have its effect on Nigeria, are another call for attention to ensure that people are catered for.
“And then we have these unrests in all the neighbouring countries—in Cameroon, in the southern part of Cameroon—that have over 46,000 refugees coming into Nigeria. So there are over 36,000 in Cross River. We have a whole lot in Taraba and Benue along that border.
“We’re dealing with order crises in Niger, with people coming to Sokoto, Kano, Katsina, and all of that. This is in addition to the Nigerians that are refugees in this country and the migrants that were trying to go through Niger and Libya and got stocked around the border. So it’s a whole lot as it concerns the humanitarian crises and what we need to deal with as a Ministry.
“But now the bigger one is here, which is poverty alleviation. The last statistics done by the Bureau of Statistics, says that about 133 million Nigerians are poor; that’s multi-dimensional poverty, and then about 70 million of these people are extremely poor. So, they’re living below $1.95 per day. The President is committed to the SDG, which is raising these people out of poverty by 2030, and we need your help. We need your help! That’s a lot of work, and I just thought it was important to get you to the table at the foundational stage.
“First, we would need a lot of technical help. Technical help to see that we can draw a baseline set the agenda, and come up with programmes and projects that can be implemented to lift people out of poverty while addressing humanitarian needs.
“Secondly, we would also need lots of financial help in terms of supporting programmes, supporting processes, and helping with implementation. It starts with one of the innovations we want to put on board, which is the Presidential Humanitarian and Poverty Alleviation Trust Fund.
“Now, we need to be able to go full-blown into a robust resource mobilization, a move that can help us pull together funding into one basket that will be used to address both the humanitarian crises and the poverty alleviation programmes and projects without necessarily going through the bureaucratic bottlenecks of government.
“So, every other day, we have humanitarian issues arise, and sometimes we do not respond adequately. We do not prevent them. We are unable to even carry this out to the end because of several constraints. Sometimes it might not even be that the government is not willing to put the money there, but that the process to get the money was not budgeted for in the last budget.
“So, you have to go to the National Assembly and beg over 300 and something people to agree that this is a crisis and you need to intervene, which will take probably a month, and then thereafter, you move from there to the Ministry of Finance and FEC, and before you say Jackie Robinson and issue, which you probably should be responding to in hours to save lives, in two months, you’re yet to take any concrete action because of the constraints.
“So, we must be innovative enough to find a way around this so that there does not impede implementation. And that’s why we’re coming up with the Trust Fund. Now it’s a Trust Fund that Nigeria would put a skin in the game, so we’ll put our monies into the Trust fund from the budgetary allocation and special intervention funds Nigeria will be putting into this basket. Beyond this, we are looking at Donor agencies and development partners coming into this space. We’re also looking at harnessing the private sector to come into the space and support us.
“Now, in terms of the private sector, I’m sure you very well know what happened during COVID, where the private sector for the first time stood up to the occasion under CA-COVID. And they came in en masse to support us, and we saw the difference. That was the first time in this country that the private sector was right in front of the driver’s seats, really put in the back behind the government.
“And we are also not just asking for free support or free money from the private sector; we are ready to work with the Ministry of Finance to offer them things like tax rebates. And the rest of it if they’re supporting this Trust fund as part of their corporate social responsibility, and other subheads that they can use to support the Trust Fund.”
According to her, plans are underway to provide tax incentives for members of the organised private sector who are interested in supporting the Trust Fund.
“Like I said, Donors, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as Development partners, will be brought on board. We’re also looking at earmarking part of the tax; if you have followed through, you’ll see that there’s an increased tax on some commodities, especially sugar, and the rest of them that were approved by the Federal Government and the National Assembly had that passed; however, it’s not been earmarked.
“So, we’re looking at earmarking those taxes to support humanitarian response as well as poverty alleviation. Other sources we’ll be working with are embassies and other Countries that want to be part of this support.
She also reiterated the Ministry’s resolve to engage several other countries in UNGA to garner international support for the success of the initiative.
“We can equally go into the Middle East to pull support from Foundations and individuals that are happy to support the country in this drive.
“But one thing is clear: it’s going to be a worthy cause. We will all sit together at the roundtable and work out the modality for transparency and accountability around the Fund. And we’ll all have you as key stakeholders. So, this is another place where we need a lot of technical support to put together this Trust Fund.
“The reach is wide, and we’re going to be setting up a Committee of both private sector individuals and government individuals, and we will need you to be part of that Table discussion to provide this fund for Nigeria. We’ll fix something realistic for our minds, who are thinking of something, but we will need to get approval for the amount to be what we would be looking at raising for the Trust Fund.”
In his remarks, the Country Director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mr Jeremie Zoungrana, who applauded the Minister’s laudable initiative and proactiveness, reiterated his commitment to various health-related programmes in Nigeria.
“The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as you already know, is working in different areas. That, I believe, is also to contribute to the Minister’s mission. And of course, one of the areas is health. We want to make sure that everyone lives a very productive and healthy life, and in terms of health fees, when you are not healthy, you cannot be productive, and when you are not productive, you end up being poor. Everything that we link to is linked to that, but we also want to make sure that we offer everyone the opportunity to contribute to life, and the opportunity is really to reduce poverty.
“So, poverty is another area that we are trying to contribute to by investing in economic opportunity for agriculture through financial inclusion. And of course, gender is another aspect. There is a lot of cross-cutting, digitalization, innovation, you know, across different things, but we do understand that humanitarian aid and poverty alleviation are also very important aspects, as I mentioned previously.
“So, I will say we aligned on the need to consider that. And I want to say that we also take note of all the areas that you’ve mentioned in terms of the need for technical assistance, you know, to be able to set the agenda for what we can do, you know, as a programme for this minister. And one of the most important things that I notice is the Trust Fund that needs to be operated. You know, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is trying to be catalytic as much as possible. You know, we know that we are just a small contributor to the development, and when we have a contingency opportunity to support it, you know, we will always be alive.
“But one thing I want to add here is that we as a Foundation at the country level, our role is really to enable the clinician or the team to be able to support the Government of Nigeria, so as a country, we are also linked to many other Programme Strategic Teams with whom we’re connecting, what the country needs, so that when they are planning, they are the ones who own some of these decisions in terms of funding,” he assured.
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