The following framed AANs work and attainment of its overarching objective of poverty eradication in 2017:
Insecurity and Poverty
- Insecurity in the country took a new turn in 2017. While some of the towns and communities captured by the insurgents have been reclaimed by the military, attempts to resettle displaced persons have proven abortive due to unrelenting attacks by the insurgents thereby affecting their source of livelihood.
- Issues of conflict between herdsmen and farmers have remained perennial crises. Communities are still under attack with high records of casualties, leaving citizens helpless with little or no source of income to survive, especially women headed households who depend on agriculture to sustain their family.
- During the year, the country had stood at the edge following tension created by actions of the secessionist group, Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB). While the threat from other sources such as the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) had paled, the IPOB-triggered tension had reverberated in all parts of the country and created palpable fears in some parts. The fear of ethnic clashes and attacks fueled the decisions of citizens to flee their domiciled place of business and residence to return to their indigenous communities.
State of the Economic and Poverty
- Nigeria’s economy overcame recession in the second quarter of 2017 and grew in real terms with the GDP figures rising by 1.4 per cent (year-on-year). Despite this growth, the evidence of growth is not visible in the lives of the poor as prices of consumer good remained high.
- The state of inequality in the country increased in 2017 with unemployment rate rising from 16% to 18%. This is further heightened by increased youth restiveness and increased spate of armed robbery attacks, kidnapping and various heinous crimes which sterns from the impoverishment of vulnerable citizens, especially young people. as a who are desperate survive off the limited resources in their communities.
- 2017 manifested a new phenomenon as impact of inequality and poverty level resulted to increased suicide rates in the country. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), Nigeria was said to have a 15.1 suicide per 100,000 population per year rate, which ranked the country at 30th most suicide-prone out of 183 nations in the world.
Shrinking Political Space
The sponsorship of the CSO regulatory bill by Deputy Majority Leader of the House, Umar Jibril and pursuant to its passage followed in the track of an earlier effort to regulate the use of social media and criminalise rights of expression through same medium. Although, it was established that there already exists laws, policies and institutions that address some of the issues the bill claimed to correct, the sponsors of the bill have continued to push for its passage.
Women’s Right: Nigeria’s Sad Outlook
The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index ranks Nigeria 118 out of 144 countries. This ranking shows Nigeria trailing some poorer African countries and some other nations with long history of women rights abuse. The economic and security situation in the country has directly influenced the infringement of human rights of its citizens to life, security, education, freedom of worship and association etc. This is more peculiar to women, who are more most vulnerable in the face of violence and emergency.
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