19th-20th February, 2003

Mr. Chairman,
Fellow Governors and Delegates,
The President of IFAD, Mr. Lennart Båge,
Your Excellencies,
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,

Mr. Chairman, I extend my delegation’s special felicitation and congratulation to the Council and its entire management and staff on this memorable and auspicious occasion of the Silver Jubilee Anniversary of the founding of this forward looking and vibrant organisation.

Twenty-five years ago the international community, propelled by the Oil Producing and Exporting Countries (OPEC), demonstrated a unique global solidarity with the least endowed and most deprived segment of the World Community (the rural poor) and decided to set up a Fund with the unique mandate of specifically addressing the economic plight of these people. The establishment of IFAD was thus and probably remains the single most important and focused response to a challenge which has the potential of undermining the survival of humanity as a whole. I am proud that my country, Nigeria, played a leading role in this initiative, and has since remained an ardent supporter of the Fund.

Mr. Chairman, twenty-five years is a short span in the life of an institution such as IFAD but one can say without any equivocation or fear of contradiction that the peformance and achievements of the organization is, in our view, clearly out of proportion with its relatively short period of existence and here lies the cause for joy on this occasion. We thus have every justification to celebrate and congratulate ourselves.

Mr. Chairman, I am sure you will agree that poverty is not just about how many dollars there are in the pocket. Poverty deprives a person of the basic necessity of life and of his dignity. Poverty limits human freedoms and empowerment. It impairs people’s ability to realise their full potential . It is about missed opportunities. It is indeed a deprivity of hope, and a total negation of the essence of humanity. The international community can ill-afford to consign the estimated 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty to-day to eternal damnation, since the children of the poor to-day are most likely to constitute the poor of the next generation.

The collective wisdom that guided and informed the setting up of IFAD twenty-five yeas ago has been very amply vindicated over the years as evidenced by the increasing attention being focused on rural poverty by the international community, particularly in the last two decades. IFAD, apart from its direct involvement in fighting rural poverty through its field programmes and projects, has also helped tremendously in nurturing national consciousness of its member countries about rural poverty and in placing the issues of rural development and poverty reduction on the international Development agenda. The global community has thus come to the realization that the co-existence of pervasive poverty juxtaposed with the affluence of a much smaller segment of the population is ethically unacceptable, economically inefficient and politically unstainable. The multilateral financial institutions as well as bilateral donor countries are moving more and more in the direction of placing poverty reduction/eradication as primary focus of their aid programmes. The commitment of the international community to halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2015 remains the most topical and challenging development agenda the global community has set for itself.

Hitherto, declarations in formal international fora have often not been matched by concrete and coherent national policies and budgetary allocations. One notes with satisfaction that this trend is beginning to change for the better as most developed countries now place poverty alleviation/reduction conspicously on their national development goals – through the PRSP processes. The recent Brussels Summit on Least Developed Countries, the Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development and the Johannesbourg Summit on Sustainable Development have all given added impetus to this global commitment.

I am not suggesting that IFAD alone takes the credit for this resurgence of concern for rural poverty alleviation, but I am saying that it surely has played a significant role. This is as it should be, IFAD being probably the only major multilateral donor committed by charter to target its resources to assisting and enabling the poor (especially the most disadvantaged poorest of the poor living in rural areas) to overcome their poverty.

This renewed concern by the international community for the plight of the rural poor is indeed gladdening but sadly, we still have to-day, more than 20% of humanity still living in extreme poverty struggling to survive on less than one dollar a day. As we enter the 21st Century, the greatest challenge facing the international community is whether this renewed impetus can be translated into concrete national and international actions to respond to the Millenium Goal of halving extreme poverty on the Planet by 2015. Effort must therefore now be invigorated in the context of these Commitments.

What this means for IFAD, is that it must not only strive to sustain the good work it is already doing but must move at a greater tempo. It must continue to maintain a sharp focus and its uniqueness of mandate. It must remain visible among the multilateral donors in its advocacy role for the rual poor and strive to maximise the benefits of its lessons of experience gathered over the last twenty –five years of operations. But it must resist the temptation to slide into the same direction of other multilateral financial institutions, it must remain a development institution with a clear bias for rural development and poverty reduction and direct its resources to those areas of its clear comparative advantage in order to further strengthen its relevance and niche. It must remain innovative and creative in its operational strategies taking into full account, the voice of its targetted beneficiaries in order to capture their own perception of their plight.

For the Management of IFAD, the task is going to be daunting but my country is confident of this capability and capacity to lead this promising Organisation in this global co-alition to combat poverty and hunger. You can count on the full support of Nigeria in this regard. In this connection, my delegation notes with delight and fully associates itself with the increased level of resources recommended for the 6th Replenishment. The substantial increase is clearly a reflection of the confidence the member-countries have in the management of this Organization. Nigeria has no hesitation in endorsing it.

Clearly the ultimate responsibility for poverty alleviation/reduction rests with the Government of each country. To this end, my country Nigeria has, since the inception of democratic governance four years ago, initiated a number of structural and institutional reforms aimed at:

i) Ensuring a more equitable resource allocation among the three tiers of Government (Federal, State and Local) so as to enable the State and Local Governments plan the development of their respective areas in consonance with the pecularity of their respective circumstances.

ii) Empowering the Local Governments and the rural communities to not only become agents of change themselves but to enable them take greater control of and responsibility for their development.

iii) Ensuring that poverty reduction and rural development are brought to the centre-stage in our strategic development planning.

We are thus pursuing a deliberate and systematic decentralization of government structures designed to enhance people empowerement in a democractic environment.

Nigeria looks forward to greater IFAD supportive involvement in our national development strategy. On our part we will continue to extend our strong support to the organization’s role and laudable effort in promoting the upliftment of the quality of life of the rural dwellers.

With regard to the Programme of Work and Administrative Budget presented to this Session of the Council, my delegation notes with satisfaction, the clear link of the strategic objectives, with the programme of Work for 2003. The three main areas of focus captured in the regional Programmes (Field operations and Impact; Lending Programmes and Co-financing; Policy dialogue and Partnership Building) provide this Council with a clear operational direction and vision for the Fund. My delegation fully endorses the paper and commends the Secretariat for a job well done.

My delegation has also carefully perused the Report of the IFAD V Plan of Action and is in general, happy with the implementation progress.

Mr. Chairman, permit me to state in conclusion that my delegation welcomes the innovation of including a panel discussion on achieving the Millennium Development goals in the context of the rural poor. We hope that a synthesis of the outcome of the round table discussion and the consensus of the Panel interactive session will further deepen our appreciation of the complex nature, causes and effects of rural poverty and help IFAD to further fine-tune its operational strategies in its noble role of tackling rural poverty and hunger.

Mr. Chairman, distinguished fellow Governors and Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for your attention.