The Federal Executive Council (FEC), on Wednesday, approved a concessionary loan of $82 million (N13 billion) from the Japan International Development Agency (JICA) to assist Nigeria in the efforts to end the scourge of polio in the country.
Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, announced this at the end of the FEC meeting chaired by President Goodluck Jonathan at the Aso Rock Villa.
The minister explained that the loan is at two per cent interest rate and comes handy at a time Nigeria has recorded about 50 per cent drop in polio cases over the last one year.
Minister of Water Resources, Sarah Ochekpe, also announced FEC’s approval of an updated National Water Resources Master plan (2014-2030) to help Nigeria manage its water resources.
According to her, the master plan will be implementing in three stages spanning 2014-2020, 2021-2015 and 2026-2030, and is designed to take into consideration the trend of global climate change.
Describing the master plan as comprehensive, Ochekpe explained that it prescribes, among other things, funding methods, irrigation and drainage systems, all in a bid to improve quality and access to water by Nigerians.
The President’s Chief Economic Adviser, Nwanze Okidigbe, updated the FEC on the latest World Bank report, which puts the number of Nigerians living in poverty as a third of the population.
Briefing the press afterwards, he explained that the report was a cheering news because it showed a significant drop in percentage and meant government policies in the last four years were yielding results.
Besides, it was a correction of the World Bank’s earlier report, which had put the number of poor Nigerians at over 100 million, arrived at using outdated data, a development that Nigeria had successfully challenged by asking the Bank to use more recent and accurate data.
Okidigbe pointed out that the World Bank definition of poverty, being living on less than $1.25 (N195) per day, was simply inapplicable to 100 million Nigerians, and this was proved to be so by the Bank’s latest report which adopted more reliable statistics gathered between 2010 and now