Festus Keyamo, the spokesperson for President-elect Bola Tinubu, has accused state governors and local government chairmen of being responsible for the pervasive multidimensional poverty that plagues Nigeria.
POLITICS NIGERIA reports that Keyamo’s comments came after a Twitter user, @NigerTrump, confronted him with the fact that the Buhari administration in which Keyamo serves, had caused 130 million Nigerians to fall into multidimensional poverty.
Keyamo responded with a tweet on Saturday, claiming that the study that showed over 130 million Nigerians living in multidimensional poverty was sponsored by the Buhari government. He went on to argue that it is the constitutional responsibility of state governors and local government officials to address poverty in their respective areas.
By his estimation, blame for the growing problem of multidimensional poverty in Nigeria rests on the shoulders of the likes of Lagos State governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna, and Nyesom Wike of Rivers, along with 33 other state governors and 774 local government chairmen.
“It was our government that consciously commissioned that study (on multidimensional poverty in Nigeria) and DELIBERATELY released the results. Why? Because, ‘multidimensional’ poverty relates to people not having access to the basic necessities of life like clean water, primary health care, primary education, accessible rural roads for commerce, etc.
“However, these are outside the constitutional obligations of the Federal Government. They are the responsibilities of sub-national governments like State and local governments,” Keyamo said.
According to Keyamo, the report was published to spur citizens to demand greater accountability from these levels of government. It serves to highlight the fact that combating poverty requires cooperation among different stakeholders, rather than being the sole responsibility of the federal government.
It can be recalled that the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics’ 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index survey provides some alarming figures. It reveals that 63% of Nigerians, or 133 million people, live in multidimensional poverty. The national MPI is 0.257, indicating that poor people in Nigeria experience just over one-quarter of all possible deprivations.
