FG not only govs responsible for poverty in Nigeria, says ex-NHIS boss

A former Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Prof. Usman Yusuf, has faulted the Federal Government’s claim that governors should be held accountable for the level of poverty in the country.

Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Clement Agba, had attributed the poverty rate in the country to governors’ misplaced priority, saying 72 per cent of the nation’s poor reside in rural communities but the governors have abandoned them to expend state resources on the capital cities.

But addressing journalists on Sunday in Kano, Yusuf said it was unbecoming of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government to shift the blame for the high level of poverty in the country to the governors without also acknowledging its role.

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According to Daily Trust, Yusuf, who said he is now the convener and chairman of Northern Awareness Initiative, an association set up to “educate” northerners to ensure they make proper political choices in 2023, noted that despite having the presidency, ministers of education and finance as well as security chiefs, the North has been most hit with the problems of out-of-school children, abject poverty and insecurity.

He said the movement met in Kano with leaders of thought from the state and those from Kaduna, Katsina and Jigawa, and would meet with those in the Sokoto axis and then move to North East later to mobilise people against the APC government and drum support for Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) “because he has identified with the problems of the North.”

Yusuf said the North has nothing to benefit from the much-touted Muslim-Muslim ticket of the ruling APC.

He was accompanied by Ladan Salihu, a former Director-General of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) as well as Mahdi Shehu, an activist and secretary of the movement among others.