SOCIAL INVESTMENT ALLOCATION IN 2016 BUDGET UNPRECEDENTED – OSINBAJO

To ensure access to healthcare for Nigerians, the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration will put in place effective primary healthcare centers across the country, Vice President Yemi Osunbajo has said.

He also promised that Nigeria will collaborate with international agencies to end HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country.

Osinbajo spoke at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, while receiving a delegation of the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, led by its Executive Director, Mr. Michel Sidibe.

He stressed that inadequate access to healthcare is a poverty issue and should be put in that perspective.

Osinbajo explained that it was for the same reasons that the present administration put “half a trillion Naira” in the 2016 budget as social investment fund to address poverty.

The Vice President, according to a statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande, listed the six social investment plans of the Buhari presidency.

He said they included creation of 500,000 teaching jobs for unemployed graduates, 370,000 youths to be taken through vocational training and skills acquisition and would be paid while doing so and conditional cash transfer programme where one million extremely poor Nigerians would be paid N5,000 per month in 2016.

Others are – homegrown school feeding programme where the federal government provides one-meal-a-day to primary school pupils across the country, free education for tertiary education students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics and a one-time N60,000 loan to market women, artisans and traders through a Micro Credit scheme using the Bank of Industry.