SERAP demands Buhari intervention as 133 million Nigerians certified poor
The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has called on President Buhari to set up a panel to audit the social intervention projects between 2015 and 2022 amidst the announcement by the National Bureau of Statistics that 133 million Nigerians now live below poverty level.
SERAP also urged the Buhari-led administration in a letter to “ensure the findings of any such investigation are widely published and suspected perpetrators of corruption, and mismanagement of public funds meant to take care of the poor should face prosecution as appropriate, if there is sufficient evidence, and any stolen public funds should be recovered.”
According to a recent National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report, 133 million Nigerians are poor, despite the government reportedly spending N500 billion per year on ‘social investment programs’. Children account for half of all poor people in the country. In response to the report’s findings, SERAP wrote to the President in a letter dated November 19 and signed by the Deputy Director, Kolawole Oluwadare.
Oluwadare stated, “The report that 133 million Nigerians are poor suggests corruption and mismanagement in the spending of trillions of naira on social safety-nets and poverty alleviation programmes, including the reported disbursement of over $700 million from the repatriated Abacha looted funds to these programmes.
Your government has legal obligations to effectively and progressively address and combat extreme poverty as a matter of human rights.
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“The failure to address extreme poverty has resulted in high levels of inequality, and serious violations of economic and social rights of Nigerians, particularly the socially and economically vulnerable sector of the population,” he said.
Copying the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Olivier de Schutter, the letter continued, “These grim revelations by the NBS show the failure to fulfil your oft-repeated promise to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty, and that no one will be left behind.
We would be grateful if the recommended measures are taken within seven days of the receipt and/or publication of this letter. If we have not heard from you by then, SERAP shall take all appropriate legal actions to compel your government to comply with our request in the public interest.”
The civil advocacy group warned that it would take legal action to compel Buhari’s government to act if it did not within the ultimatum.
