The Presidency said President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo care less about re-election.
The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Social Investment Programmes (SIP), Ismaeel Ahmed, said this at the weekend while briefing State House correspondents on the progress of the SIP.
Ahmed; who addressed the press conference alongside the Special Adviser to the President on SIP, Mrs Maryam Uwais; emphasised that Buhari and Osinbajo were rather concerned about Nigerians, whom they were more committed to serving.
The presidential aide, however, stated that if the president and the vice president had to campaign for a re-election, they had a lot of success stories to tell.
This was even as Mrs Uwais disclosed that 80 million Nigerians were poor based on the estimate from the World Poverty Clock.
Uwais stated that the National Social Investment Programmes had achieved profound successes, noting that the poorest of the estimated 80 million poor Nigerians were considered for the Conditional Cash Transfer scheme.
She said under the Conditional Cash Transfer Programme, 297,973 poor households in 20 states were currently being paid stipends. She listed the states as Ekiti, Jigawa, Bauchi, Kogi, Osun, Cross Rivers, Kano, Anambra, Katsina, Taraba, Gombe, Adamawa, Niger, Nasarawa, Oyo, Benue, Kwara, Borno (IDP), Kaduna and Plateau.
She said the national social register was being developed in 23 states that had met the requirements, explaining that her office was trying to target and pay only those who are ‘really’ poor.
She said 7,054,687 primary 1-3 pupils were currently being fed daily in 20 states of Anambra, Enugu, Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Ebonyi, Zamfara, Delta, Abia, Imo, Benue, Plateau, Bauchi, Taraba, Kaduna, Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Jigawa, Niger and Kano; adding 72,510 cooks were hired and empowered. – Daily Trust.
