The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr Betta Edu, says no fewer than 8.3 million Nigerians are in dire need of humanitarian assistance in Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa states.
Edu said the figure is part of the total 16 million Nigerians affected by various humanitarian crises, with the three states worse hit.
The minister said this in a statement by her Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr Rasheed Zubair, on Sunday in Abuja.
She said aside from the North-East, Benue in the North Central had been tagged the capital of humanitarian crises in Nigeria by the United Nations.
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“We have a huge task on our hands. As we speak now, over 16 million Nigerians are affected by humanitarian crises either man-made or natural disasters with over 8.3m of them based in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe.
“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 said.
She added that: “One of the agenda of the Tinubu administration is 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 lift Nigerians out of poverty.
“Our work is to see how we can get those in poverty out and those on the verge of getting into poverty to social safety to protect them from falling into poverty.
“In a couple of weeks, we will be fully launching into this plans to take over 136 million Nigerians out of poverty as implementation has started to help cushion the effects of the fuel subsidy removal.”
She said the ministry had come up with innovative ways of thorough verification of the social register for accuracy and transparency.
The minister promised to upgrade, rejig, and expand the social safety net programme to accommodate more people through a transparent process. (NAN)
