The Federal Government (FG) said state governors were partially responsible for increased poverty levels across the country, adding that governors prioritize the construction of infrastructures such as bridges and airports instead of enhancing the lives of the rural poor. This assertion was made to State House correspondents on Wednesday by Clement Agba, the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning shortly after this week’s Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting.
He said, “The governors are basically functioning in their state capitals and democracy that we preach about is delivering the greatest goods to the greatest number of people. And from our demography, it shows that the greatest number of our people live in rural areas but the governors are not working in the rural areas.
“Right now, 70 percent of our people live in rural areas. They produce 90 percent of what we eat and unfortunately, 60 percent of what they produce is lost due to post-harvest loss and it does not get to the market.
“I think from the Federal Government’s side, we are doing our best. But we need to say that rather than governors continuing to compete to take loans to build airports that are not necessary, where they have other airports so close to them, or governors now competing to build flyovers all over the place, we appeal that they should concentrate on building rural roads so that the farmer can at least get their products to the market”.
According to him, farm products were more affordable at the point of harvest but became more expensive as a result of poor rural-urban roads, therefore causing disruption in the supply chain.
He advised state governors to channel the resources of their states into providing the basic needs of the people such as food, nutrition, housing, amongst other needs.
He also said, “At the federal level, the government is putting out so much money but not seeing so much reflection in terms of money that has been put into alleviating poverty, which is one of the reasons the government also put in place the national poverty reduction with growth strategy.
“But if the Federal Government puts the entire income that it earns into all of this without some form of complementarity from the state governments in playing their part, it will seem as if we are throwing money in the pond”.
