Senate Wants To Declare October 17 As Poverty Day

The call was part of the prayers of a motion unanimously adopted by the Senate at the plenary on Tuesday. It was titled ‘Commemoration of the United Nations International Day for the Eradication of Poverty’ and was moved by Senator Ali Wakili and 22 others.

The Senate on Tuesday called on the federal, state and local governments of Nigeria to “henceforth” designate and observe October 17 as World Poverty Day in line with the United Nations resolution.

The upper chamber of the National Assembly also appealed to community-based organisations, the media – both conventional and social – to step up discourse on the scourge of poverty and its debasement of human dignity.

The lawmakers also resolved that policies and programmes by the Federal Government through the social investment programmes and other poverty alleviation measures are vigorously pursued.

They also asked the Federal Government to implement the necessary Sustainable Development Goals that would eliminate poverty in line with Goal 16.

In the motion, Wakili noted that October 17 was the day set aside for the commemoration of poverty redication worldwide, while 2017 marked the 25th anniversary of the declaration by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its resolution 47/196 of 22 December 1992.

He recalled that the recent data from the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics indicate that no fewer than 112 million Nigerians, representing 67.1 per cent of the country’s estimated population, now lived below poverty level, “hence the challenge for all to rise to the occasion to vanquish poverty.”

He stated that passage of the Poverty Eradication Bill had been the right step towards the actualisation of the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 for sustainable development and meeting the obligation by all countries to end poverty in all forms.