BY KENNETH EZE
Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo has said that the various intervention programmes of the Muhammadu Buhari administration since 2015 to date were designed and implemented to improve the socio-economic conditions of Nigerians with emphasis on health and education, while particular attention was paid to women, children, and youths.
Osinbajo spoke on Thursday in Abuja at an event to mark sixth anniversary of the ‘Future Assured Programme,’ an initiative of the Aisha Buhari Foundation.
The VP urged youths to get involved in politics, because “government still holds the ace in terms of capacity and resources to bring social good,” though youths could achieve so much as civil society.
Senior Special Assistant to the Vice-President on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande, quoted Osinbajo in a statement titled, ‘How we focus on health, education, women empowerment and youth interventions – Osinbajo’.
The statement read, “The very future of Nigeria and our communities depend on how well we address the many concerns of women and children in our communities, especially the focal areas of health, education and economic empowerment.
“We agree with Future Assured’s belief that all social indices can be influenced if the health, education and economic status of the population are improved upon. And that is the case women constitute half of our population and the youth are, at least, 60 per cent of that population.
“Women, especially young girls, continue to face problems of every kind and these problems mutate as the social pressures increase every passing day.”
It added that since 2015, the Buhari administration ensured that the government’s social and entrepreneurial programmes had an affirmative component for women.
“So, of the 2.4 million beneficiaries of the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme, 1.2 million were women – that is 56.4 per cent of beneficiaries.
“A total of N38 billion in loans has been disbursed over the last four years. Of the 1.1 million beneficiaries of the Conditional Cash Transfers, over 98 per cent of beneficiaries are women.
“For our youth employment programme N-Power, of the 526,000 employed, 40.4 per cent are female. And, of the 106,074 cooks in our Home-Grown School Feeding Programme, 97 per cent are females.
“We implemented a payroll support programme which was designed to mitigate income losses in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and of the 307,173 employees that have benefited, 130,880 or 43 per cent of beneficiaries are female-owned businesses,” it read.
It also indicated that of 94,318 artisan beneficiaries of the programme, 40,386 are female artisans, i.e., over 41 per cent of beneficiaries. And so far, 35 per cent of all MSMEs grants are female.
“All of these are deliberate affirmative action to ensure that women benefit proportionately,” it added.
On addressing violence and other abuses against women, the statement read, “in November 2019, to enhance access to justice, we secured a toll-free emergency number and short-code for the FCT- SGBV Response Team, with the generous support of Airtel.
“We also developed Referral Guidelines for Gender-Based Violence Response in Nigeria and a National Guide for the Establishment of Sexual Assault Referral Centres in Nigeria to further enhance coordination.
“Also in 2019, the President directed the National Human Rights Commission to set up a special panel to investigate cases of unlawful arrests, assault and Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in the Federal Capital Territory following complaints of raids of night clubs and arrests of women by the Police.”
Commending the Future Assured programme for the impact of its interventions across health, education and social welfare, it stated, “it certainly has been an exciting 6 years.”
Aside from the First Lady, Aisha Buhari, other dignitaries present at the event include the wife of the Vice-President, Dolapo Osinbajo; Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State; Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire; his counterpart in the Niger Delta Affairs Ministry, Godswill Akpabio, and top United Nations officials.
