Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Economic Affairs, Tope Fasua, says deliberate and consistent investment in infrastructure remains the only panacea to reduce multidimensional poverty in Nigeria.
Fasua, who made this statement on Friday, when he featured in ‘The Morning Show’, a programme on Arise News, emphasised that the solution to Nigeria’s deeply rooted, non-income-based poverty lies in building the physical systems that bring people closer to essential services.
According to him, multidimensional poverty goes beyond monetary measures such as daily income.
He added that it encompasses access to health services, education, clean water, transportation, and other social amenities.
While citing commonly quoted figures such as 130 million Nigerians living in multidimensional poverty, the presidential aide warned against treating the statistics as static without examining what they truly represent.
“The only way in the books that you can reduce multidimensional poverty is by spending on infrastructure. I fully support a larger budget; Nigeria has one of the lowest budgets per capita in the world.
“In 2019, Nigeria’s budget per capita was surpassed only by that of the Democratic Republic of Congo. We need to reimagine a new Nigeria and avoid being trapped in a state of cognitive dissonance, where we can only envision the negative aspects of our country,” he said.
Investment on infrastructure only way to reduce poverty in Nigeria – Tinubu’s aide
