Prudent management of resources, key to lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty ― Akume

The Minister of Special Duties and Intergovernmental Affairs, Senator George Akume, has declared that prudent management of the country’s resources is key to President Muhammadu Buhari’s mandate of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty over the next 10 years.

Akume stated this, on Monday, in his office while receiving the Chairman of the Fiscal Responsibility Commission, Victor Muruako, who led a delegation of the commission on a courtesy visit to the minister.

According to the minister, today more than any other times there was the need to not only generate resources but also ensure that what was generated was made available and applied prudently for the interest of Nigerians, the majority of whom lived in the rural areas.

He submitted that if resources were managed prudently and transparently, a lot could be achieved and also deployed for employment generation.

“Today more than any other time in our history, we need to generate and to ensure that whatever is generated is made available and is applied prudently for the interest of our people.

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“This underscores the importance of the president’s charge to all of us to ensure that 100 million Nigerians are pulled out of poverty over the next 10 years.

“If resources are managed very prudently, very transparently, a lot can be gained and this can also be applied in employment generation areas,” the minister said.

Akume said though what accrued to the federal government might be slightly bigger than what accrued to other tiers of government, in aggregate terms what others got could not be taken for granted as they were huge enough to make a difference.

While saying that borrowing by tiers of government has a template clearly spelt out in relevant legislation, Akume charged the Fiscal Responsibility Commission to beam its searchlight on the three tiers of government more vigorously, saying that, “sometimes in doing this, no matter whether we are doing well or not, you will put us on our toes.”

He assured the commission of his ministry’s readiness to collaborate with it to organise a national fiscal responsibility forum for local government chairmen and councillors with a view to inculcating prudent management of resources, transparency and accountability.

Speaking earlier, the chairman of the commission, Victor Muruako, informed that his commission was saddled with the responsibility, among others, of monitoring of borrowing and indebtedness of the three tiers of government in Nigeria.

According to Muruako, while verifying amounts borrowed by the government at all levels as well as actual utilisation of the loans, the commission observed that some state government did not use borrowed funds for the purposes they were borrowed.

He proposed a collaboration between the commission and the Federal Ministry of Special Duties and Intergovernmental Affairs to organise a national fiscal responsibility forum for local government chairmen and councillors in order to basically “inculcate the principle of prudence management of resources transparency and accountability.”

NIGERIAN TRIBUNE