The Federal Government, through the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, has commenced engagements on Social Protection to harness inputs into the National Social Protection Policy under review, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
The first of these engagements began in the South West on Wednesday, as the FG commenced talks with the six states of the southwest geopolitical Zone and CSOs working on Social Protection.
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This was disclosed in a statement by the Ministry of Information on Wednesday.
The FG was represented by Mrs. Olusola Idowu, Permanent Secretary, Budget and National Planning and Chairperson, Technical Working Group (TWG), at the Stakeholder’s Consultation and Sensitization Workshop for the South West Zone on the Review of the National Social Protection Policy.
The Permanent Secretary disclosed that the meeting was to organize input from stakeholders regionally, and added that the meeting would be a “first in the series of the stakeholder’s engagement for which will run across the six geo-political zone.”
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She also stated that the designed process consultation, sensitization and validation would also be repeated before the draft policy was eventually finalized and pushed for approval by the Federal Executive Council and later legislated on by the National Assembly.
Princess Adejoke Orelope, Senior Special Assistant to the President on SDG, revealed that the FG was working on Medium-and Long- term SDG-Based Development aspirations of the states through a partnership with the UNDP Nigeria.
She added that Social Protection Policy development should start from the needs, realities and priorities of the group which were intended to benefit, including factors that would contribute to the developments of policies and systems that elevate the needs of poor Nigerians.
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What you should know
- Nairametrics reported in October that the World Bank had stated that as many as 150 million people would fall into extreme poverty by 2021, due to the economic effect of the pandemic.
- World Bank said the COVID-19 pandemic could add as many as 5 million Nigerians into the extreme poverty bracket.
- The Statistician-General of the Federation, Dr. Yemi Kale, stated that the lack of a sound statistical system would act as a clog in the wheel of progress, in terms of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Nigeria.
- Dr Kale said, “Nigerian government at all levels requires robust and reliable statistics to enable them effectively design programmes towards the implementation of the SDGs and monitor progress made in achieving the desired goals and targets.”
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