Presidential committee on Northeast urged to address poverty and illiteracy
Bauchi Government urges Presidential Committee on Northeast to address poverty and illiteracy
The Bauchi State Government has appealed to the Presidential Initiative Committee on Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of the North-East region to address the underlying factors of poverty and illiteracy which has given rise to insurgency.
Governor Mohammed Abdullahi Abubakar of Bauchi state who made the appeal while receiving members of the Economic Development Subcommittee who paid him a courtesy call at the Government house in Bauchi, expressed the fear that if poverty and illiteracy were not addressed, the northeast stands the risk of a crazy person rising up to recruit an army of insurgents in the future.
” Your job is to rehabilitate, rebuild and reconstruct the North-East region that was ravaged by the activities of Boko Haram insurgents, but most importantly, you must address the factors of poverty and illiteracy that gave birth to this problem of insurgency”
“Secondly, you must not forget the peripheral states such as Bauchi who gave succour to neighbouring states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe, that were affected by insurgency”
“our infrastructures are now overstretched because of the influx of IDPs.For example, Bauchi state by estimation needs 12.5 million litres of water, but now the state needs 25 million litres of water because of an increase in population growth” He said
Earlier speaking, the chairman of the sub-committee on Economic Development, Yusuf Buba Yakubu said members of the committee were on a fact-finding tour of the North-East with visits to Gombe and Bauchi States.
Yakubu said that the committee was in the state to interact with stakeholders and understand their concerns in terms of job creation, health revitalization, international trades and entrepreneurship development.
The chairman explained that another mission of the committee visit to the state was to coordinate activities of ministries, parastatals and donor agencies that were coming to the Northeast in order to intervene in the crisis that has bedeviled the region.
