Jigawa: I’ll reduce poverty by 50% in four years – Gov-elect

Umar Namadi, governor-elect of Jigawa State, has promised to reduce poverty rate in the state to at least 50 to 60 per cent in his first tenure in office.

Jigawa, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) recent report, has 5.76 million multi-dimensionally poor people.

A report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) also said the state has 73.9 per cent of children who are multi-dimensionally poor, ranking the state highest in terms of poverty compared to other parts of the country.

This was revealed in a report of the agency’s 2021 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS 6) conducted across the 27 local government areas of the state.

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Answering questions in an interview on Channels TV’s Sunrise Daily, Namadi said he has plans to drastically reduce the poverty rate.

He said, “We have an intention to encourage and support small scale and medium businesses, we will try as much as possible to provide them with access to fund and also give them counseling. With that we feel that we will definitely be able to reduce the level of poverty.

“And in addition to that, we know Jigawa is an agrarian state. We have done so much on agriculture which brought a lot of advantages and helped to improve the economic status of the state.

“Now we intend to expand on that, we will expand our irrigation facilities and encourage research and development. We will collaborate with local and international partners so that they will have investment in agriculture.

“When that is done, we feel it will go a long way in creating jobs, providing food security and increasing our internally generated revenue.

“Definitely with these programmes we have on the ground and our intention to upscale what them, we feel that by the end of first term we should be able to reduce the level of poverty in Jigawa state to at least 50 to 60 per cent.”