Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has
said that there is no reason any Nigerian should live in abject
poverty, considering the resources that the country is blessed with.
Obasanjo said this Tuesday in Abuja while receiving an award as grand patron of the Association of Credit Marketers of Petroleum Products in Nigeria (ACMPPN).
Appreciating the gesture of the group, Obasanjo said: “I appreciate what you do and what you have done. I also thank you for appreciating that we invested in people’s lives and it was beneficial.
“For the eight years that I was the president, what was paramount in my mind was how to make Nigerians have better lives. At the time I saw a statistics from the World Bank that rated poverty in Nigeria at 72 percent.
“Even with many people coming back we were able to reduce the rate. By 2004 it had dropped to 52 percent and below 38 percent by 2007. Even then I didn’t think it was good enough.
My belief is that no Nigerian should be in abject poverty, where a man doesn’t know where he will get food to eat; or a woman is pregnant and the child is born hungry.”
Obasanjo said this Tuesday in Abuja while receiving an award as grand patron of the Association of Credit Marketers of Petroleum Products in Nigeria (ACMPPN).
Appreciating the gesture of the group, Obasanjo said: “I appreciate what you do and what you have done. I also thank you for appreciating that we invested in people’s lives and it was beneficial.
“For the eight years that I was the president, what was paramount in my mind was how to make Nigerians have better lives. At the time I saw a statistics from the World Bank that rated poverty in Nigeria at 72 percent.
“Even with many people coming back we were able to reduce the rate. By 2004 it had dropped to 52 percent and below 38 percent by 2007. Even then I didn’t think it was good enough.
My belief is that no Nigerian should be in abject poverty, where a man doesn’t know where he will get food to eat; or a woman is pregnant and the child is born hungry.”
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