Nigeria’s Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Dr. Bernard Doro, says that the Federal Government of Nigeria has launched the National Poverty Intelligence Lab, which is a data-driven platform designed to strengthen the targeting, monitoring, and evaluation of poverty-reduction programmes.
Speaking at the opening of a three-day workshop on the operationalisation of the lab in Abuja, the minister said that the Lab would address the plight of an estimated 140 million Nigerians living below the poverty line.
He explained that the initiative is expected to serve as the central intelligence and evidence-gathering hub for the government’s anti-poverty interventions.
The minister said that the country could no longer rely on assumptions and fragmented interventions in tackling poverty and that Nigeria’s poverty challenge requires a new approach anchored on data, evidence and accountability.
“Recent estimates indicate that approximately 140 million Nigerians live below the poverty line. The scale and depth of the challenge is staggering, but it is surmountable,” he said.
“What this moment demands is not more of the same. It demands systems, intelligence, evidence-driven leadership and, above all, coordinated and accountable action.”
Doro described the National Poverty Intelligence Lab as the “intelligence backbone” of Nigeria’s poverty reduction architecture, saying it would provide the analytical support needed for policy formulation, programme implementation, resource allocation and performance assessment.
“For many years, our interventions have been driven by assumptions rather than evidence, sometimes by politics rather than data, and by silos rather than systems,” he said.
“The NPIL changes that. It gives us the analytical infrastructure to ask the right questions, find credible answers and hold ourselves accountable for results,” he added.
GIK/APA