Labour chieftain tasks FG on wealth creation to combat poverty
Poverty
Chinyere Bassey
Lagos, June 28, 2018 (NAN) The General Secretary of Textile Workers Union, Mr Issa Aremu, on Thursday called on the Federal Government to channel more resources into wealth creation, to improve the lot of the masses.
Aremu made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos, while reacting to the report that placed Nigeria as the poorest nation in the world.
NAN recalls that a report by World Poverty Clock stated that Nigeria had overtaken India as the country with one of the world’s poorest people.
The report further stated that Nigeria had over 87 million people living in poverty with six persons becoming poor every minute.
Aremu said that “poverty level denial should give way to sustainable policies to eradicate wants and deprivations in the midst of abundance for a few privileged rich.”
He, therefore, urged the Federal Government to evolve “a wholistic programme of wealth generation and wealth distribution, instead of poverty reduction.
“The poor know that the key to eradicating poverty is wealth creation.
“What Nigeria needs now is wealth creation, which calls for a halt to existing de-industrialisation.
“We need sustainable job-led growth not the existing jobless growth.
“Industries must be revived to generate enough goods and services.”
“When supply exceeds demand, price must fall and when people work, they should earn enhanced wages, which would boost their purchasing power.”
Aremu said it was unnecessary “agonising over poverty, when what is needed is to organise and banish poverty.”
He said that the Brookings Institution’s report was not substantially different from that of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in 2017.
He said that NBS report put unemployment rate at 16.2 per cent from 14.2 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2016, with 57 million people officially unemployed.
Meanwhile, Dr Okechukwu Enelema, Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, has denied the report, saying that it might have been compiled based on the state of the nation during recession.
CHIN/USO/IFY
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Edited by Sam Oditah/Ify Omowole