Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, has accused the past administration of Goodluck Jonathan of failing to plan for Nigeria’s future in spite of the fortunes it raked from crude oil sales and other revenue sources.
Osinbajo made the allegation on Tuesday at the opening ceremony of the 5th National Family Planning Conference ongoing in Abuja.
The VP, who admitted that the current population growth of 3.2 per cent posed risks for the nation by 2030, explained that apart from the economic policies of the past government which were tilted to make lives comfortable for a minority of the people, the administration did not make adequate family planning commodities available to those who needed them.
His words: “In the absence of basic social safety nets, and pro-poor policymaking, tens of millions of our people were left stranded, observing the statistics of economic growth from a distance, completely untouched by it. The sad reality is that for most of our history as a country, periods of economic growth have somehow managed to leave out the majority of our population.
“Between 2011 and 2015 when Nigeria enjoyed some of the highest revenues in history, and overtook South Africa to become the largest economy in Africa, there was no commensurate impact in poverty alleviation and improvement of wellbeing.
“If Nigeria’s prevailing annual population growth rate 3.2 percent persists, we will have an additional 68 million people by 2030, and will be the third most populous country in the world by 2050,” he said.
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