poor who had difficulties accessing credit facilities available in the commercial and merchant banks; and the Community Banking Scheme that provided credit to small scale producers. Health Sector Programmes include the Primary Health Care Scheme, which aims at providing at least one health centre in every local government; and the Guinea-worm Eradication Programme, launched in 1988 with assistance of donor agencies including UNICEF. The effectiveness of the PHC programme was hampered by inadequate funding from the LGAs, and lack of equipment, essential drugs, and trained manpower. In the Education Sector, the Nomadic Education Programme developed curricula for nomadic education, trained nomadic teachers, and provided infrastructure for the nomadic schools. At the onset of the Fourth Republic in 1999, the Federal Government introduced The Poverty Alleviation Programme (PAP) early in 2000 as a stop gap to address the problems of unemployment and in 2001 replaced it with the National Poverty Eradication Programme(NAPEP). The National Poverty Eradication Council(NAPEC) was also established as the coordinating body for all poverty eradication programmes. The following were some of the poverty reduction programmes of NAPEP: (i) Youth Empowerment Scheme(YES) which dealt with productivity improvement, credit delivery, technology development and enterprise promotion; 22