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Doris Egberamen, Founder of PUSH AFRICA
By Akanji Alowolodu, Bauchi
As political activities towards the 2023 general elections heat up, a pro-poor development organization, PUSH AFRICA, has launched a nation-wide initiative to redirect the attention of politicians and policymakers to the urgent challenges posed by escalating poverty in the country.
The initiative tagged ‘Do-One-Thing’ campaign is designed to advocate and support the Nigerian government’s effort to reduce the number of poor people in the country by half by the year 2030.
It is also directed at supporting similar anti-poverty initiatives by development agencies and private sector institutions.
According to Doris Egberamen, Founder of PUSH AFRICA, a key objective of the campaign is to focus the attention of prospective leaders who are aspiring to vie for various political offices to give priority attention to the raging increase in the number of poor people in the country and to show to the Nigerians that they have a practical and actionable plan to tackle the pervasive and deepening poverty in their various constituencies.
She explained that a key component of the campaign is to create a platform where Nigerians most hit by poverty can tell their own stories as it affects them so as to show the depth and harsh realities they live with.
According to her, the projection is that by exposing the vulnerable conditions in which they live, the nation’s elected and appointed leaders will be encouraged to take serious and actionable steps towards solving the problem.
PUSH AFRICA lamented that statistics show that about 95.1 million Nigerians – close to half of the country’s population still live below the poverty line.
““This current situation is disturbing and if we are not deliberate about this issue, the statistics will keep getting worse and the consequences in terms of negative socio-economic impact and underdevelopment will keep on the rise”. She said.
She added that, “For the sake of our current and future generations, we cannot allow this to happen. As an organization, we are indeed disturbed about this hike hence the urgent call on all stakeholders to do something drastic and practical about this poverty pandemic in this country.”
While acknowledging the current administration’s efforts in the terms of the will shown by the President, Muhammadu Buhari and the enormous work done so far, PUSH AFRICA believes that there is still so much work to be done and there is a need to trouble shoot the current efforts to find out what is working and what is not.
“We need to check how well the solutions being administered are working and detect problematic areas that needs more attention”, she stressed.
The pro-poor organization believes the current political season and the expected emergence of a new administration presents a good opportunity for all aspiring political leaders to be more intentional and strategic about poverty reduction and the need to make it the number one priority and PUSH AFRICA wants to spur them in that direction.
“As we all know, poverty is linked to inadequate nutrition and food insecurity, lack of access to health care, basic education, insecurity, unsafe neighborhoods and of course to the ugly head called corruption and all of these adversely impact on our nation’s wellbeing”, she added.
The main goals of the DO-ONE-THING campaign according to Doris Egberamen are:To promote socio- economic justice for poor people in Nigeria; To advocate that the government formulates and or adopts sustainable programmes and policies to help redress the poverty, unemployment, education, health and housing problems of the poor throughout the country.
Also to create a platform where poor people can tell their own stories, be agents, participants and beneficiaries of sustainable economic growth in their communities; organize fine minds to highlight and find solutions to the many problems facing the country’s poor and advocate economic and fundamental human rights for poor Nigerians.
The campaign will over the next decade focus on engaging and articulating the problems of the poor in this country in a manner that will lead to sustainable solutions for poverty reduction in Nigeria.
The organization hopes to point government to some community based opportunities that when harnessed can help reduce poverty in local communities across the state.
Also planned over the next few months are events that will create platforms for engagement with our political leaders aspiring for leadership positions to share their plans and aspirations for their constituencies with regards to poverty eradication, social and economic development.
The Yobe State Election Debate is one of such events that will usher in some of these programmes and events and this type of engagement will be an ongoing activity even after the elections.
A team of state and local government coordinators both at the state and grass root levels will lead the campaign and engagements in all 17 local government of the states.
These coordinators will be responsible for sensitization and voting education – they will encourage the poor masses to vote only for the candidates who would harken to their aspirations and work towards reducing the harsh poverty conditions in which they live in.
The organization, PUSH AFRICA is committed to ensuring that the number of poor people in this country and by extension in this state is reduced by half by the year 2030 and we want all Nigerians (all yobelites) both at home and in the diaspora to lend their voices to this cause.
She therefore called on all stakeholders, political leaders, development partners, the media and members of the public to support the campaign so that together they can build the Nigeria of their dreams void of poverty, unemployment and the many social vices the country is plagued with.
I hope do one thing campaign can bring positive change to our nation,