My New Devt Plan’ll Lift 100m Nigerians Out of Poverty, Says Buhari

President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday said that his new development plan will lift about 100 million Nigerians out of poverty by 2030.

The president stated this in Abuja when he inaugurated the National Steering Committee to oversee the development of the ‘Nigeria Agenda 2050 and Medium-Term National Development Plan (MTNDP),’ which succeeds ‘Vision 20:2020 and the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) 2017 – 2020.’

The new development plan is jointly chaired by Mr. Atedo Peterside and the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed.

Vision 20:2020 and Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) 2017 – 2020 will both expire in December 2020.

Speaking at the inauguration in the State House, Buhari said the main goals of the development plans are to lift 100 million Nigerians from poverty in the next 10 years following World Bank’s projection that Nigeria will become the third most populous country in the world in 2050.

According to him, the Chinese development plans, which he said had brought no fewer than 700 million people out of poverty in the last 40 years is a good example to imitate.

He added that China’s development agenda only suffered a setback in the first quarter of this year as a result of COVID-19 outbreak.

He said COVID-19 pandemic, which has created economic crises for both Nigeria and the entire world, also has its own inherent opportunities which he said presented the country with the platform to think and chart the part of progress.

Speaking on Vision 20:2020 and ERGP, Buhari said while the objectives of ERGP were conceived to include restructuring and sustaining economic growth as well as building a robust economy, Vision 20:2020 on the other hand, was conceived to put Nigeria on the path of sustainable socio-economic development.