Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Friday chaired the first meeting of the National Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy Committee.

The meeting, held at the State House in Abuja, comes 17 days after President Muhammadu Buhari inaugurated the committee, tasking it with the responsibility of helping his administration fulfil its promise of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty. Details of what the committee discussed have yet to be disclosed.

Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mr Boss Mustapha; Chief of Staff to the President, Ibrahim Gambari; and the governors of Ekiti (South-West), Delta (South-South), Sokoto (North-West), Borno (North-East), Nasarawa (North-Central), and Ebonyi states (South-East) are all members of the committee.

Other members of the committee are Ministers of Finance, Budget and National Planning; State for Budget and National Planning; Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development; Agriculture and Rural Development; Industry, Trade and Investments; Labour and Employment, Education and Health.

In inaugurating the committee, on June 22, the President had listed its responsibilities to include; anchoring collaborative efforts; providing oversight for the implementation of the strategy; providing guidance to Technical Working Group and federal ministries, extra ministerial departments and agencies, subnational governments and other stakeholders on meeting the objectives of the programme; as well as monitoring progress and any other effort that would enhance the attainment of the objective of lifting 100 million people out of poverty in 10 years.

“If India can lift 271 million people out of poverty between 2006 and 2016, Nigeria can surely lift 100 million out of poverty in 10 years. Fortunately, we have already started but we need to unlock the challenges of slow implementation, inappropriate targeting, and absence of adequate resources,” the President said.