The Federal Government has promised to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty by providing enabling environment for small businesses. The Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed Shamsuna, stated this in an interview with NTA, which was quoted and published on the ministry’s twitter handle Monday morning.

The tweet said: “President Muhammadu Buhari has directed that we must pull 100m Nigerians out of poverty and that is our major focus”. Based on the president’s directives, the minister said that the country had to move fast to make the kind of change the president wanted in the country. She said: “In 2020, we want to move very fast because we realized that going at the steady rate we are doing is not going to make the kind of change that the president has directed must happen.

The president has directed that we must pull 100 million Nigerians out of poverty and for all of us ministers, that is our major focus. “So, we have to make sure that we are creating more jobs and reducing unemployment, and pulling as many Nigerians as possible out of poverty.

And that is the reason why when we did the finance bill, you will find that the bill was largely targeted at making businesses easy for the small and the very small businesses. This is because we believe that is where the economy needs to really grow and stabilize from.”