Dumebi Kachikwu, while addressing newsmen in Abuja, said if elected, his administration would would set up social support structures for the aged, young, women and poor Nigerians.
Kachikwu, who is vying for the Presidential seat under the African Democratic Congress (ADC) party, stressed the need for the government to support these segment of people in the society.
He said, “Obviously the aged, weak, young, women, poor people, are a segmented part of society that are always under-supported. My plan is to create social support structures for these people. Our government is a government that will pride itself on making Nigeria work for everyone. On that level they will be taken care of.
“But as a people, as Nigerians we need to start reaching and preaching love and tolerance and help that can lift these people up. When you look at recession, this segment of society are the ones who feel it the most. Government needs to start putting up support structures, my government will definitely thrive on that.”
The Presidential Candidate, while criticizing the pension scheme in the country, propounded that the establishment of a Nursing home for old people, will assist the aged citizens.
“As a society we don’t even have old people’s homes, which should be a private sector driven enterprise, but where the private sector is lacking government needs to also step up to give a direction so that the private sector can then follow. If we put things like this in place they would do better in society.
“When we look at our field pension schemes in Nigeria, a lot of these people give all their years to service and eventually their pensions are stolen. We hear cases of people queuing outside government offices and after a while you hear that some of them have died, never receiving their pension.
“These are all horror stories we hear from people suffering from failed government policies, we need to address the situation. Nigerians cannot act as if they are not part of us, they are our parents, we need to support them.”
