The Minister for Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr. Betta Edu says about 16 million Nigerians are affected by the humanitarian crisis.
However, Bornu, Adamawa, and Yobe are the worst hit.
The Minister said during an interview with journalists in Abuja on Saturday, that aside from the North East and North Central state of Benue, it had been tagged the humanitarian capital of Nigeria by the United Nations.
She said, “We have a huge task on our hands, as we speak now, over 16m Nigerians are affected by humanitarian crises either man-made or natural disaster with over 8.3m of them based in Borno, Adamawa, Yobe, and several States in the North Central; and others spread across the country.
“The UN said Benue had become the humanitarian need capital in Nigeria, and as such, a lot of work needs to be done in the humanitarian angle,” she lamented.
The Minister maintained that “one of the agendas of Tinubu administration was to ensure that poverty is alleviated in Nigeria in line with the SDG goal one.
“The President is coming up with a very robust program to alleviate Nigerians from poverty”
Dr. Edu stressed that Poverty Alleviation was now the new and important mandate of her Ministry “as our work is to see how we can get those in poverty out of poverty and those at the verge of getting into poverty increase to social safety to protect them from falling into poverty.
“All lot of work is being put into the planning stage as we have finished the debriefing from the different Departments as well as the Agencies under us; we are working assiduously to finalize the plans.
“In a couple of weeks, we’ll be fully launching into this plans to help President Tinubu take out over 136m Nigerians out of poverty as implementation has started to help cushion the effect of the fuel subsidy removal”
