Presidency: Local Governments Have Primary Role In Reducing Poverty

The presidency said that local governments have the responsibility of fixing poverty in Nigeria, as they are the closest to the people.

Tofe Fasua, Special Adviser to President Tinubu on Economic Affairs (Office of the Vice President) said this in an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today.

“That is why president Bola Tinubu is calling for local government autonomy,” he said.

“Fixing poverty is definitely a local government’s thing because local governments are the closest to the people.

“So the solution to poverty in Nigeria is actually at the local government level, and that’s the reason the President has advocated for local government autonomy, and has also ensured that the states are a lot more powerful now in terms of funding.

“I told you about the fact that those days where civil servants will be owed 18 months, 12 months, six months, are gone. “A lot of pensioners are getting their money and I think that’s where it matters.

I used to visit a lot of local governments in Lagos in 1999 and I saw how local governments were working then.

“Many people were coming to the local government. “Those people who were really down financially, they would go to the local government chairman on a daily basis and they were being settled,” he said.