Security, education key to poverty reduction — Atiku, Obi, Kwankwaso

THE Presidential Candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar; Labour Party, LP, Peter Obi; and New Nigeria Peoples Party, NNPP, Rabiu Kwankwaso, have all agreed that security and proper education are required to pull Nigerians out of poverty.

They said this while responding to questions on the Arise TV Presidential Town Hall Series on Monday December 5, 2022.

The town hall meeting was organized by Arise TV, Centre for Democracy and Development, CDD, in partnership with  Vanguard Newspapers,  Premium Times, Daily Trust, Nigerian Guild of Editors, NGE and Nigerian Union of Journalists, NUJ in Abuja.

How I'll deal with poverty, insecurity, education — Atiku

Atiku Abubakar said he would use available statistics to deal with the issues.

According to him, investments in education and security would go a long way in addressing the poverty challenge.

He said: “We have all the statistics. We have to get our children educated by the time you educate them they become readily available for the private sector to recruit them.

“The private sector is the key to driving the economy. In Third World countries, agriculture is the main employer of labour. Here, again, you have to give incentives to the private sector.”

Atiku maintained that under his administration, he would provide incentives to the private sector most of which would go to the Small and Medium Scale Enterprises, SMEs to encourage young people to set up businesses and grow them to create employment.

He recalled that during his time as Vice President, he commissioned a study which proffered solutions to the high number of out-of-school children especially in Northern Nigeria.

Atiku, however, expressed sadness that none of the northern governors took steps to implement the report, which would have gone a long way in substantially reducing the number.

He said, the current system has bottlenecks because when government releases funding for universities it goes to another agency, that agency stifles the universities from getting these funds. 

Atiku promised to increase investments in the education sector to reverse the growing number of out-of-school children in the country and revitalise the health sector.

Atiku stated that the government should work with relevant agencies to avoid a bottleneck in the funds earmarked for the education sector in a bid to end the constant strike actions of the Academic Staff Union of Universities.

He said, “In terms of their arrears and their salary structure, the government must be prepared to invest more in the running of our universities. And then, we should also avoid a bottleneck in getting these funds to the right places which are the universities.

“In the current structure, there is a bottleneck. When the government releases funding to the universities it goes into another agency of the government and that agency now stifles the universities from getting this funding; forget about whether the fund is sufficient or not.

“Let me give you an example when I was vice president, I enlisted a few foreign missions, I found out that they were not receiving their salaries and allowances and were not paying remittances for months and I called the Minister of Finances then. Each embassy submitted its budget and after it was approved, we now started wiring these monies right to these embassies. The people did not like this, but it was the right thing to do.”

FG mainly responsible for poverty — Obi 

Speaking on poverty, Obi said the Federal Government should take the lion share of the blame for the growing poverty in Nigeria because it controls fiscal policy and security, which has degenerated to a point where farmers can no longer go to the farms.

He said the Federal Government needs to clearly spell out its fiscal policy to grow investor confidence in the economy, saying: “The major factor causing poverty is the Federal Government. We need security to restore confidence of foreign investors in the economy.”

He also lamented that investment in education has remained poor over the years, this, he said was largely responsible for falling standards and growing poverty.

The LP candidate said when compared to South Africa, Nigeria’s investment in education is abysmal, noting: “Our investment in education is low, it is about N3.6trillion in the last six years, which is less than 10 percent. In South Africa, they invested about 380 Rands which is about 14-16 percent of their budget.”

On his plans to deal with the challenge of out-of-school children especially in the north, Obi said: “Most of these children studied Quran, and if they studied the Quran, it means they are intelligent, I will meet them at this point and give them skills.”

He also expressed the view that increasing the number of security personnel will go a long way in dealing with our security challenges.

How I’ll secure, educate, empower Nigerians — Kwakwaso

In his submission, Kwankwaso said for the NNPP, education has always been key in the party’s plan to pull people out of poverty.

He said: “Education has always been key for us in pulling people out of poverty. I’m not surprised that we have 133 million people living in poverty. If you talk to road side economists they will tell you the figure is much higher.”

This he said would be reversed when he becomes president noting that he did this successfully during his time as two term governor of Kano State.

In the area of security, he said he would increase the number of security personnel across board and properly equip them to perform their duties.

The former Kano State governor called for a holistic review of the Constitution to ensure that the 774 local governments to get their allocations directly rather than from their various states for effective and efficient development of the third tier of government.

According to him, as Governor of Kano State, he adopted a method of brainstorming with the Local Government chairmen each time the commissioner of Finance returned to the State from Abuja on the Federal Allocation, then begin to table those issues that must be addressed with salaries first and then others which led to the construction of roads in each of the Local Governments, turbines   in two of their dams as well as paying all the salaries.  

On education and the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, recurring strikes, he said he would encourage the private sector to invest in  education from the primary to the tertiary level, just as he said that ASUU issue had to do with honesty, credibility and sincerity.

Culled from Vanguard