STATE HOUSE PRESS RELEASE

OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT

HOW BUHARI ADMINISTRATION’S ESP HELPED NIGERIA TACKLE COVID-19 CHALLENGES - OSINBAJO

*VP highlights impact of Sustainability Plan in saving jobs, sustaining livelihood, improving healthcare sector

*Calls for global action in access to vaccines for African countries in Chatham House event

Nigeria’s priorities in a post-COVID-19 world include restoring economic growth in the immediate term, building resilience in the health sector, and repositioning the economy on a sustainable footing in the medium term while saving jobs and building domestic capacity and local production in critical areas.

These were the summations of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, during a virtual Chatham House interactive session on Tuesday themed: “Priorities for Nigeria’s Post-COVID Recovery”.

During the Chatham House interaction, the Vice President discussed the challenges posed to Nigeria by the global COVID-19 pandemic and the Nigerian government’s response aimed at ensuring lasting socio-economic recovery and development.

Prof. Osinbajo highlighted the significant impact of the Buhari administration’s Economic Sustainability Plan (ESP) as a crucial pivot in helping the country respond to the fallouts of the pandemic.

He explained that “the Buhari administration’s first priority was to protect people and their livelihoods in response to the fallout of the pandemic. One of the ways was to support the critical MSMEs sector through the Survival Fund scheme, a component under the ESP.”

According to the VP, “one of the specific interventions under the ESP was what we describe as the Survival Fund, which essentially was a fund to protect jobs and to ensure that during the course of the pandemic and immediately thereafter, informal workers in particular or private sector workers especially those in the informal sector, were at least able to continue to earn some wages."

Prof. Osinbajo stated that through the Survival Fund scheme, over 300,000 beneficiaries, as well as businesses have been supported during the pandemic “by providing salaries for three months for beneficiaries, which include private school teachers, artisans, road transporters, taxi cab operators, and commercial tricycle operators in the urban areas .

“We also sought to protect the most vulnerable, in particular, the urban poor who were also hard hit. What we did was to provide direct cash transfers to the urban poor, many of them who are captured in a social register. In the first phase of that, we are able to benefit about 1 million beneficiaries, and we are now in a position using the same social register to scale up the programme to about 20 million beneficiaries.”

The Vice President also highlighted the work being done by government in the areas of improving broadband connectivity and expanding the country’s national identity base, which he stated would help in developing the country’s existing social register and other pro-poor programmes under the Buhari administration’s Social Investment schemes.

Also, to stimulate production in the economy, Prof. Osinbajo noted that the Federal Government is “focused on energising existing value chain in agriculture, construction and renewable energy,” even as he highlighted the impact of the ESP’s agriculture scheme and social housing programme in improving local productivity and creating jobs.

“Our agriculture programme (under the ESP) aims at expanding productivity, creating a total of about 5 million jobs. What we have done so far is that we've been able to register and geotag about 5 million new farmers to farmland areas. The programme is also supporting smallholder farmers by linking them to extension services and low-interest input financing.

“We also have a mass housing programme which is designed to deliver affordable homes through direct intervention in the housing construction sector aimed at creating 1.8 million jobs together with the construction of 300,000 homes in the first phase. At the moment, the programme is ongoing in 12 states which will be expanded to all of the states in the federation.”

The Vice President further explained that the ESP was developed as a short-term strategy to address the two-fold challenge posed by the pandemic: to both public health and the national economy.

For instance, in the health sector, Prof. Osinbajo stated that a critical area for government in the fallout of the pandemic “is in doing far more with our research institutions and investing far more in these institutions.”

He said, “since February 2020 (when Nigeria confirmed its first COVID-19 case), we have significantly ramped up our testing and case management capacity. We have activated from about five molecular laboratories to about 120, most of them public laboratories.

“We have expanded the footprint of our sovereign public health response capacity, especially at the sub-national level, and in areas where such capabilities didn’t exist before.


Prof. Osinbajo further said government was also focused on promoting a culture of preparedness across all levels of the country’s health care system by building resilience in the health sector.

“Going forward," he said "we are committed to building on the exemplary dedication of our health workers and strengthening the capacity of our health systems to withstand shocks created by infectious diseases and pandemics such as we are experiencing.

“One reason why we've been able to manage this pandemic better than expected is that we did have some existing public sector infrastructure to work with, the Ebola outbreak in 2014, our ongoing battles with Lassa fever, our successes with polio eradication all helped us to tighten our pandemic contingency plans, strengthen our emergency coordination and surveillance capacity and also enhance investments in public health laboratories.”

The Vice President highlighted the government’s efforts through the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) in tackling the pandemic, adding that it also prioritized the strengthening of the country’s public health infrastructure

“While it is true that in many respects, our hospital infrastructure still lags behind in standards, especially when compared with richer countries of the world, we've been able to draw on the resilience and adaptability of our tried and tested community health system,” he noted.

The VP also called for global action in ensuring access to vaccines, especially in poorer countries, noting that, “there are justifiable concerns, in my view, about the certainty of fair and equitable access to vaccines, as well as the likelihood that poorer countries would be left behind if the distribution of these vaccines is determined by the nationalistic sentiments.”

“As part of our recovery efforts, Nigeria has taken delivery of about 4 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccines under the international COVAX scheme and we have commenced vaccination of our people. This year, we will receive 84 million doses of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine under that same scheme, which would be enough to vaccinate about 20 per cent of our population.”

According to the VP, “in our globalised environment, national self-interest is insufficient to address the challenge of a global pandemic, Indeed, in a world that is interconnected as ours, any plan other than a global plan is bound to be counter-productive.”

The Vice President further stated that a policy imperative of the Buhari administration is also hinged on encouraging value addition in every sector of the economy, especially to consolidate areas where the country had comparative advantage.

The live event was chaired by a senior official of Chatham House; Dr. Renata Sevan.

Laolu Akande
Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media & Publicity
Office of the Vice President
23rd March 2021

Wonderful!

Na thunder go fire both the mind wey Una take think all dis nonsense and the hand wey Una take type am

ok

Damnnn niggarrrr
Isoright.......

This pussy ass niggarr called vp will be talking and acting like a star boy...whereas he is just a mere house boy in aso rock

The only star boy we know is wizkid and the weeknd...

Bvlgari:
vaccine when other countries dey reject...even south africa just sold off all of theirs...failed country

South Africa sold theirs because the vaccine nor dey treat their own variant abi type of Corona viruse

That's good. Me and Yahaya Bello will make sure nobody disrupts the taking of vaccines..

....


The controversy surrounding the vaccine has become too much


Religious foolishness is one of the major instigation of such rubbish...

People are busy spreading rumors that it is the mark of the beast, of you take it it will change your DNA...

What on earth is wrong with you people ?

Let's calm down abeg, if you won't take the vaccine then just lock up and stay calm no need to spread info you are not sure about, that can get you arrested.


Even the likes of TB Joshua, Apostle Suleiman, Oyedepo, have not come out openly to say anything.

vaccine when other countries dey reject...even south africa just sold off all of theirs...failed country


@slawormiir and you believe that bullshit? they are selling it off because its not good...full stop

Are these people mad?

Same Astra everybody is complaining about

Can't you go to the market and look for a better vaccine?

Do you have blood Astra veneca?

Puppets all dancing to the same music of a global reset using the plandemic. The only one that refused to go along was the Tanzanian guy and he was quickly eliminated.

make ona clothe ona blood he nor concern me. who die make he greet the other side for us.

I don’t even know if I’m taking the vaccine sef

We are indeed progressing...

Oga o vaccine is not our problem take the feul back to normal size and provide good roads

People that didn't distribute rice will distribute vaccines

Is it not the same vaccine that the country that made it rejected for its citizens??

Laudable.

4CHAN EXPERT NEEDED

If you know 4CHAN like you know Nairaland and can write a compelling promotional article about a cryptocurrency project. I have a job for you.

Contact in signature.

As for me and my family; we are not taking any vaccine.
That vaccine isn't for us, we have much more troubling diseases.
German measles (rubella), Lassa, Ebola, malaria....

L'ori iro

Okay, but please ensure you loot it because Nigerians won't be angry after all you guys looted the most important thing food.

Are these people mad? Other countries are rejecting that vaccine even the country that produced it has halted it's use, South Africa is returning it's own doses and are waiting for Pfizer's vaccine and you are proud to open your mouth in the international community to say you are expecting 84million doses of are rejected vaccine. This country is an unbelievable joke. Who we offend for this country sef?

That fake Chinese product

His joking or probably sick or this is a fake news. It cant be the same AstraZeneca that CNN reported that it was causing blood clot on people and other strange reactions but the experts claim there's no proof the vaccine caused those reactions and it's safe. Despite it being rejected by some European countries and which suspended its use WHO organisation, AstraZeneca people, Nigeria leaders are maintaining that it is safe for people. We do not know if the leaders took a mere fever vaccine but these guys are hell bent on forcing people to take this dreaded AstraZeneca. Maybe something is about to happen but I am prepared. I am not taking any vaccine. Time to brace up

Una dey craze

Urfavouritegirl:
Wonderful!

What's wonderful there? Na the rejected vaccine in Europe those Bastards leaders are ordering for cos at moment here they've stopped administering it cos of some issues!! which way my people?

KingZaddy:
....


The controversy surrounding the vaccine has become too much


Religious foolishness is one of the major instigation of such rubbish...

People are busy spreading rumors that it is the mark of the beast, of you take it it will change your DNA...

What on earth is wrong with you people ?

Let's calm down abeg, if you won't take the vaccine then just lock up and stay calm no need to spread info you are not sure about, that can get you arrested.


Even the likes of TB Joshua, Apostle Suleiman, Oyedepo, have not come out openly to say anything.

You obviously don't believe in freedom of speech. The thing with freedom of speech is that you are allowed to say what you like even if you are wrong.
Let everyone one say his mind.

The President i know. 2023.

For what?
These people are serious ni o.
After a year of not taking COVID-19 serious without consequence and now that even the countries who suffered severely are recovering nicely, this FG is importing vaccines for who?