NAPEP Boss Reiterates Yar'Adua's Stance to Fight Poverty

from All Africa

Leadership (Abuja)

By Grace Azubuike
Abuja

The National Coordinator of the National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP), Dr Magnus L Kpakol, has reiterated President Umaru Yar'Adua's mission to fight poverty in Nigeria and praised his immeasurable support to NAPEP and other poverty related agencies.

The coordinator made the statement in a two-day retreat for NAPEP state coordinators, secretaries and principal officers of the state coordinating committees in Abuja recently.

While extolling the unflagging efforts and commitment of the coordinators in ensuring that the fight against poverty is sustained, he noted that the support and passion of the president has percolated to different levels and has become the crutches the nation needs to steady itself on the road to economic emancipation and empowerment of the poor.

Dr Kpakol explained that the retreat was designed to revaluate strategies that would put NAPEP on a proper and effective footing to implement the Village Economic Development Solutions (VEDS) scheme and the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) scheme.

He observed that NAPEP was taking the fight against poverty with great passion and zeal as the president would expect its impact to be made in the thirty-six states of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory.

The retreat would furnish the state officers with the tools they need to make a positive impact on the implementation of the VEDS and CCT programmes.

"The majority of our people live in the states and this is where the incidence of poverty is most pronounced " he said.

Dr Kpakol further said that one of the cardinal objectives of NAPEP was to link the people to various sources of funding, expertise and markets the world over, in order to lift them out of poverty.

According to him, the fight against poverty being coordinated by NAPEP was unprecedented, as it has stirred up other agencies of government and private sector to rise up against the scourge of poverty.

He observed that the local and international attention NAPEP has drawn to the menace of poverty has yielded remarkable results as government and private agencies have approached the programme for partnership to implement programmes that would lever the poor out of poverty.

Earlier in his address, the secretaryof programme of NAPEP, Dr AbdulGaniyu Obatoyinbo, said that the retreat was organised to sharpen the skills of the participants and deepen their understanding of the implementation strategies of programmes.

He noted that the importance of the retreat was underscored by the compelling need to fine tune the various programmes of NAPEP, shed light on the monitoring process and promote satisfactory performance by participants.

Obatoyinbo hoped that the retreat would expectedly produce well articulated guidelines for the various initiatives of NAPEP such as the Village Economic Development Scheme (VEDS), Conditional Cash

Transfer (CCT) and the Multi-Partner Matching Fund (MP-MF).

He joined other staff to express appreciation to the National Coordinator for the organization of the retreat.