Vice President Yemi Osinbajo,yesterday, in Abuja revealed that 2016 budget contained six well articulated social welfare programmes and packages that would tackle poverty, illiteracy and health challenges of Nigerians.
Speaking during a courtesy visit by a delegation of Reckitt Benckiser West Africa, a household care products company led by its West Africa Managing Director, Mr. Rahul Murgai and the Chairman in Nigeria, Chief Olu Falomo, the Vice President noted that in a country where more than 110 million Nigerians were extremely poor, “we are bound to have such health challenges as having about 110,000 deaths yearly from diarrhoea.”
Giving a breakdown of the programme, Osinbajo said it cuts across critical areas like education, health, employment among others.
He said: “All together there are six social protection programmes of the Buhari administration for which funds have been allocated in the 2016 budget. These are Teach Nigeria, where 500,000 graduates would be hired as teachers; Youth Employment and Empowerment, where between 300,000 and 500,000 youths would go through skills acquisition and vocational training;Conditional Cash Transfer, where one million extremely poor Nigerians will receive N5,000 monthly this year.
Others are Homegrown School Feeding, where one meal a day would be served to public primary school children across the country; Free Education for tertiary education for 100,000 students of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics and the Micro-Credit Scheme that will give N60,000 one time soft loans to market women, and artisans.”
Speaking also, the West Africa Managing Director of the company, Mr. Murgai, said Reckitt Benckiser’s utmost goal was the health and happiness of the Nigerian people.
According to him, the company was worried about Diarrhoea deaths, revealing that it has earmarked about N1.2 billion to fight the situation in Nigeria.
On a similar note, the Vice President also received a delegation from the Twelve-Twelve Polo and Turf Club, Abuja led by Mallam Murtala Aliyu, the Club’s Advisory Board Chairman.
Osinbajo while appreciating the visit and commending the efforts to set up such a club, urged the members to consider making polo, horse-racing and other equestrian sports open and available to young people who otherwise may not be able to afford playing in such expensive games.
“There would be many who can benefit from this sport, young people in colleges who might become great polo players, but won’t be able to afford it,” the VP noted.
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