Senate Committee on States and Local Government Administration and some critical stakeholders in the private sector are proposing the establishment of investment basket aimed at reducing poverty especially at the local government areas.
The Chairman of the committee, Senator Olalekan Mustapha, disclosed this at the local government economic summit organized by the Senate Committee in collaboration with Civi-Pact in Abuja, with the theme, “Local Government System Resilience for Sustainable Development”.
He expressed worry over the increasing poverty index in the country, lamenting that the development was putting great pressure on the political actors at the local levels.
Mustapha said that the summit was conceived to foster a common ground for local government stakcholders on critical political economic issues affecting the country’s national life.
He said, “The challenges of poverty in Nigeria needs an objective and collective approach,” adding that in the globalised world of today, local governments were fundamentally empowered to attend to the basic needs of people be it economical, social and political.
According to him, “Our experiences of Nigeria local government system so far show that despite the constitutional provisions; the local government system has inherent weaknesses in terms of provisions of basic needs for her people or rather in terms of creating enabling environment for socio-economic life of rural Nigerian to thrive.”
