“President Buhari’s Priority Has Always Been For The Welfare Of A Common Man” – Osinbajo

Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo has reiterated that the priority of President Muhammadu Buhari has always been for the welfare of a common man.

Osinbajo stated this in Bauchi while commissioning a Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) Shared Facility for soap and groundnut oil making clusters, the launch of a rural electrification project and other projects executed by the state government.

According to Osinbajo, the successes recorded in the social investment schemes and its planned expansion proves that President Buhari’s priority remains for the common man. He said:

“President Muhammadu Buhari has always been committed to the welfare of the common man and that is why one of the major programmes of the Federal Government is the Social Investment Programmes.

“All of the schemes – the N-Power, the School Feeding Programme, the Conditional Transfers, the other GEEP schemes and the MSMEs clinic, are the President’s own way of saying that the first priority of our government is the common man – those who cannot take care of themselves or those who are struggling very hard to do so.”

Speaking specifically on the impact of the Federal Government’s SIPs in Bauchi state, the Vice President said, the state government had done well in ensuring that the people were properly mobilized to participate in all the schemes hence the impressive figures recorded by the state in the various components of the SIPs.

“I recall that when we started the SIPs, the very first state that efficiently used our portal under the N-Power job scheme was Bauchi state.

“The state governor made sure that several young men and women of Bauchi state were able to use the portal and to the surprise of many, the largest number of persons who were registered on the portal were from Bauchi state.

“Today, under the N-Power, Bauchi has 13, 075 beneficiaries, 972 under N-Build. Under the Homegrown School Feeding Porgramme, 618,124 are fed everyday here in Bauchi.

“In addition to that, we have farmers benefiting from our SIPs. Currently, we have about 9,799 farmers who have been given micro-credits to support their works. Under the TraderMoni, Bauchi has one of the largest figures in the scheme with 39,000 beneficiaries,” he said.

Osinbajo added that 23,000 person in Bauchi had also benefited from the Conditional Cash Transfer scheme.

He lauded the launch of the Bauchi Health Contributory Scheme and the Health Trust Fund, describing it as “historic and commendable”.

He said the state government had scored an important point by taking on the responsibility of providing for a contributory scheme for its citizens and also a health trust fund.

According to him, “modern way of funding health care is by either creating a contributory scheme or by having in place a trust fund. The launch of these schemes here in Bauchi is a landmark development in the social and economic development of the state.”