The World Bank is to support? Youth Empowerment, Social Support Operation (YESSO) and education in Nigeria with additional? 450 million dollars.
The Country Director, Ms Marie-Francoise Marie-Nelly, said this in Abuja on Thursday while briefing newsmen on the bank portfolio in Nigeria.
She said that the addition would bring the portfolio of the bank in the country to 1.452 billion dollars.
“1.2 billion is the existing portfolio in Nigeria, we have 750 million dollars in health, 275 million dollars in education and 200 million dollars in social protection.
“In health, we have polio, malarial, HIV AIDs, and we are trying out new project on health in Ondo, Adamawa, and Nassarawa states on result based financing for health services.
“While in education, we have two projects in Lagos where we are strengthening secondary schools and improving the quality of education.
“Third category is the social protection, where the community looks at the social infrastructure,’’ she said.
Also, Mrs Ritva Reinikka, Director, Human Development Group of Africa Region of World Bank, said a lot was needed to be done in Nigeria in terms of human development in the country.
She said the bank needed to do a lot of things in terms of growth and natural resources to translate much stronger to human development indications.
“The indicators are child mortality, maternal mortality, education quality, access and getting children to school,‘’ Reinika said.
She said that the bank was collaborating with government and other local education donor groups to address the issues.
Reinika called on the educational leaders, finance minister, planning commission, among others to fashion out ways to handle the issues.
In a related development, the Sector Leader of? Human Development, Mr Foluso Okunmadewa,said the bank was supporting government efforts to reduce inequality and to improve human capital development among youths and women.
He said that world bank initiative on YESSO would strengthen what federal and state governments had put in place.
“Youth employment and social protection will provide an immediate work opportunity for youth and women that are unskilled, unemployed using the resource that they have which is their labour.
“This will also provide cash incentives to poor households so that they can keep their children in schools, ‘’he said.