By Fortune Eromosele, Abuja

The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, UNICEF, and the National Bureau of Statistics, have identified strategic investments in children and youths as a pointer to eradicating poverty in Nigeria.

This was as the Deputy Representative UNICEF-Nigeria, Rushnan Murtaza, said child poverty was one of the things eating deep in Nigeria and that UNICEF was not relenting in taking strategic steps in addressing the issues.

The duo spoke separately in an interactive panel session with the theme: “Multi-dimensional Poverty,” organised by the High-Level Forum on SDGs on the side-lines of the ongoing 28th Nigerian Economic Summit, in Abuja on Monday. 

According to Murtaza, “Today is a great day because we are talking about how evidence and data can actually help us to strategise and invest for children in Nigeria. UNICEF has been part and parcel in generating these data, we’ve made a lot of investments as I mentioned. 

“We’ve been looking at multi-dimensional overlapping child poverty, this is a crucial part and it will give us an understanding, what is happening in the states of the situation of the children and then we can make investments.”

Speaking in the same vein, Statistician-General of the Federation, Adeyemi Adeniran, highlighted strategic investments on the youths as a key player for alleviating poverty, adding that the government had already put an initiative in place like the Nigerian National Development Program that seeks to alleviate 34 million Nigerian out of poverty by 2025.

He said, “There are so many programs of government geared towards addressing the issue of multi-dimensional poverty. Government is looking at the issue of health, education and productivity of the Nigerian youths both at the state and federal level.

“Putting this together and looking at the Nigerian National Development Program 2021-2025, where government has indicated passion to lift 34 million Nigerians out of poverty by the year 2025, all these are geared towards eradicating multi-dimensional poverty.”

The ongoing 28th National Economic Summit is organised by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, NESG, which began on Monday and continues today, Tuesday and ends with a gender summit on Wednesday, November 16, 2022.