Festus Keyamo, the Director, Strategic Communications of President Muhammadu Buhari Campaign Organisation, has opined why the country recently emerged the headquarters of poor people.
Nigeria, NGPOLITICS recalls overtook India as the nation with the highest number of extremely poor people, a report by Brookings Institution recently showed.
Before now, India used to hold the position with a population of 1.324 billion people as against Nigeria’s 180 million.
According to the report, the number of Nigerians in extreme poverty increases by six people every minute.
“According to our projections, Nigeria has already overtaken India as the country with the largest number of extremely poor in early 2018, and the Democratic Republic of Congo could soon take over the number 2 spot,” the report read.
“At the end of May 2018, our trajectories suggest that Nigeria had about 87 million people in extreme poverty, compared with India’s 73 million. What is more, extreme poverty in Nigeria is growing by six people every minute, while poverty in India continues to fall.
“In fact, by the end of 2018 in Africa as a whole, there will probably be about 3.2 million more people living in extreme poverty than there is today.
“Africans account for about two-thirds of the world’s extreme poor and that If current trends persist, Africa will account for nine-tenths by 2030.”
Critics of President Buhari has severally blamed him. Some of them attributed the hardship currently going on in the currently to his leadership qualities saying a leopard can’t change its spots.
During the military era when he first held sway as the Nigerian leader, the Buhari regime was reportedly characterised by dictatorship, economic meltdown and hardship. Since his return to power democratically as president in 2015 same scenario was playing out again.
Under the watch of Buhari, over 8million Nigerians lost their job since he took over within a duration of 21 months. This is according to statistics released by the National Bureau of Statistics.
Exonerating his principal, Keyamo said Nigeria host majority of the poor people in the world because of the climactic point of bad leadership of past administration.
“The unemployment statistics & the rating of Nigeria as ‘poverty capital of the world’ is certainly NOT a consequence of the last 3 years!,” Keyamo said in a tweet on Saturday.
“It is a culmination of many years of squandermania, waste & corruption witnessed under past govts from which we’re now battling to come out,” he added.
The administration is already known for its blame game since its emergence. When a contretemps occurs they search for whom to blame but takes the glory should positive events materialize.
In the last three years, former president, Goodluck Jonathan and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) were the ones taking the blame until recently the Buhari administration shifted the blame game to Bukola Saraki, Senate President, when the top lawmaker defected from the All Progressive Congress (APC) to the PDP.
With Keyamo’s new position, it seems the administration is shifting from the Senate President back to the first scapegoat.
