SHAWWAL 23, 1429 A.H.
TUESDAY OCTOBER 21 2008
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Our pact with poverty
By Robert Obioha
obioha@sunnewsonline.com
Those who think that things are working in the country should better think twice with the recent Nigeria’s poverty figures released by both the National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The Senior Special Assistant to the President and National Coordinator of NAPEP, Dr. Magnus Kpakol, had at a public lecture on “Poverty Solution: The Role of Government in Poverty Eradication,” held in Minna, Niger State, a fortnight ago, disclosed that 70 million Nigerians, about half of the nation’s population, are poor.
That means that one out of every two Nigerians live in poverty. And judging by the global benchmark on poverty index, it shows that about 70 million Nigerians live below poverty line at one US dollar per day. According to the NAPEP boss, 70 million Nigerians now live below N65 a day. The situation might be bleaker if the overall poverty picture can be statistically captured considering our poor statistical culture.
The source of Kpakol’s figure is a recent study by the National Bureau of Statistics. Though this writer does not intend to doubt the figure dished out by Kpakol, it is instructive to point out that the recent poverty figures released by the UNDP show that the poor in Nigeria is 70.8 percent of the population, which is far above the national poverty figure as presented by NAPEP.
All the same, the fact still remains that the number of the poor in Nigeria is rather on the high side irrespective of the huge differences in the two varying statistical figures. Both serve as a veritable reminder that the nation is already having a pact with poverty in spite of all efforts to eradicate it.
It is interesting to note that poverty in Nigeria transcends sex, tribe and religion. It affects all the six geo-political zones in the country, though, in varying proportions and intensity. It has also nullified all the claims of high performance by the various governments in the country. It has revealed, once again, that all is not well with the way we run our affairs as a country.
With this picture of poverty, we can no longer pretend that all is well with the country or delude ourselves into ever thinking that the country is working when more than half of its population go to bed hungry despite the abundant human and material resources available to squarely address the problem.
When did poverty start starring all of us in the face? It is since we collectively abandoned agriculture and pursued the abundant petrol-dollars and inflated contracts. It began when we abandoned production to pursue import trade that has, overtime, made us a dumping ground for any shabby good manufactured in Europe, Asia and America.
A look at the overall trend in poverty rates over the years in the country revealed that in 1980, the figure was 28.1 million. It increased to 46.3 million in 1985 and slides a little to 42.7 million in 1992.It rose very high in 1996 at 65.6 million and 70.0 million in 1999 while the 2004 figure was 54.4 million.
These figures further reinforce the view that the problem is ever increasing rather than being abetted by the avalanche of programmes and interventions aimed at reducing it or out rightly eradicating it from our shores. Given the level of human and material resources at our disposal, Nigerians would, indeed, have no pact with poverty in the first instance.
But the tragedy of our situation is that as more money comes in, the more the poverty level increases disappointingly. Our problem is worsened by corrupt and avaricious leadership that is perpetually and overtly insensitive to the yearnings of the suffering masses of this country that voted them into power to salvage their situation.
Let’s serve you with the statistical breakdown of the poverty rates among the six geo-political zones of the country. The North-East leads the pack with 72.2 percent. North-West closely follows it at 71.2 percent while North-Central came third at 67.0 percent. The South-West came fourth at 43.1 percent, South-South fifth at 31.5 percent and South-East is sixth at 26.7 percent.
The most interesting thing about this regional portrayal of the poverty rates is that the North, which had had the longest hold on power and can boast of a few wealthy individuals, has the greater percentage of the poor than the South. The picture of the North shows that money is not evenly distributed. It is a sharp contrast to the South where wealth is evenly distributed.
The fact that the South-East recorded the least poverty figure is never by magic. It is a reflection of the age-long entrepreneur spirit of the Igbo. It is a portrayal of the fact that the average Igbo does not look up to government or anybody for sustenance. The people do not depend on anybody or government even for projects. That the zone recorded a lower poverty rate is never as a result of government’s institutionalized poverty-alleviation programmes.
The South recorded lower poverty level when compared to the North because of its high level of literacy, which makes it possible for people to acquire skills unlike in the North where many years of misrule and almajiri culture had perpetuated poverty instead of eradicating it.
Poverty in Nigeria is driven by greed and lack of compassion on the part of our visionless and rudderless leaders. It is also driven by the penchant of the privileged few individuals in our midst who shamelessly appropriate our collective patrimony leaving the majority of us highly impoverished.
Many Nigerians are poor not because of laziness or ill luck as some religious zealots would have us believe. People are poor where there is uneven distribution of wealth and factors of production. There is gender angle to it as women are denied access to work by some religious and cultural restrictions. As officially acknowledged, some Nigerians are poor because they lack some tools and capacity as well as the technological advancement to improve their lives.
To bail the poor out of this state-imposed predicament, the government should think of novel ways to tackle the problem of poverty in the land. There is no point recycling old techniques and methodologies, which have proven obsolete and unworkable.
What the government can do right now is to embark on massive job creation. Here, we mean agro-based jobs and not white-collar jobs per se. We say this because Nigerians are hard-working people who will be ever ready to unleash their potentials if the enabling environment is there.
Most of the discontent in the land, even in the Niger Delta area and other trouble spots in the land is poverty-induced and driven. If the 70 million poor Nigerians are uplifted from that unenviable status, it is not in doubt that the country will be better for it.
We have the enormous resources at our disposal to solve this problem now. What remains is for the political leadership to muster enough willpower to address the problem. We have enough arable land for all kinds of agriculture as well as the aquatic cultures for fish farming. We do not lack the hands that can make things happen in the area of agriculture.
We do not lack fanciful proposals on how to solve our everyday problems. The only snag is implementation. A time has come when all the levels of government in Nigeria will treat poverty as an emergency that needs to be tackled with all amount of seriousness it rightly deserved. There is no way the country can achieve its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Vision 2020 and its seven-point agenda when 70 million of its population wallow in abject poverty and deprivation.
What the poor in Nigeria are asking for is empowerment and not necessarily free lunch as obtains in other lands. The time to eradicate poverty in Nigeria is now, as any postponement will worsen the situation.
