As the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari winds down in four days, the Federal Government Thursday, acknowledged there still exists a yawning infrastructure gap estimated at $2.3 trillion.
To close the gap,the government stated the country would need to spend about $150 billion annually for 10 years in other to catch up the gap. Giving a scorecard of Buhari’s Government as well as his achievements, the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Prince Clem Agba said, yesterday, in Abuja, that the Buhari administration boldly conducted the multidimensional poverty survey away from the usual monetary poverty index which covers only the monetary index.
According to him, while about 69.6 million people are monetarily poor, 133 million Nigerians are multi-dimensionally poor. Multi-dimensional poverty includes, not only monetary but deprivations of essential needs of life such as health facility, roads, water and housing.
He blamed the governors for the high rate of poverty or deprivations in Nigeria because their penchant to dissipate energy on developing the state capitals and urban areas and neglecting the rural areas, a situation that results in the development of slums in the urban areas.
