Nigeria is a paradox. It is blessed with abundant natural resources. It is the most populous country in Africa with over 140 million people offering boundless opportunities and great potential for success in the world market. Yet as rightly observed by the President, Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua shortly after his assumption of office, “the majority of Nigerians are literally going through hell in their bid to eke out a living as a result of widespread poverty”.
Regardless of the cause of poverty, poverty is poverty. It dehumanizes and tortures its victims. Poverty deprives its sufferer of honour, hope, happiness, and self-actualisation. It goes without saying that the poor subsists precariously on the edge of society. The administration of justice and police protection do not favour him. He is a weak bargainer in places where government favours are dispensed. I think it is extremely expensive to be poor. Dialectically, the powerlessness and social immobility of the masses are direct consequence of poverty. And the vulnerability of the poor people strengthen the dominance of the elite class over them whether economically, politically or physically.
In today’s environment of increasing affluence and rising expectations, the concern with poverty is the concern with social justice. It was Henry George in his book, Progress and Poverty, who said: “The association of poverty with progress is the great enigma of our times. It is the central fact from which spring industrial, social, and political difficulties that perplex the world, and with which statesmanship, philanthropy, and education grapple in vain”.
The relevant goals of any society include allocative efficiency, distributive justice, economic growth, and economic and political freedom.
So in Nigeria, what has been done, or better still, what is being done to eradicate poverty and achieve these lofty goals?
In the country, the desire of government to influence income distribution and achieve allocative efficiency is stated in the second National Development Plan documents in these words: “In a developing economy characterised by strong consumption orientation, ill-developed financial institutions and other structural defects, reliance cannot be placed on market forces to achieve equilibrium among income factors consistent with economic growth and social equity. The dynamics of incomes and prices are thus necessarily resolved through government intervention”.
At the leadership conference on “De-industrialisation of Northern Nigeria” in Abuja last year, President Umaru Yar’ Adua disclosed that his administration would soon embark on rehabilitation of institutional infrastructure in the existing 21 industrial development centres located across the country and also establish new ones in 15 other states of the federation to create jobs, raise income, expand markets, facilitate competition, and disseminate knowledge and skills. In his words: “I have no doubt that the attainment of the long term objective of social and economic transformation of Nigeria into a sustainable, competitive and prosperous economy would be achieved if all of you stakeholders display the required commitments”.
Over one year after the president’s promise, nothing significant has happened to create enough jobs for the teeming unemployed youths and adults; and nothing momentous has also happened to reduce the massiveness of poverty and general hopelessness of the people.
Strictly speaking, the poor, “the wretched of the earth”, in the words of Frantz Fanon or “the Living Dead,” borrowing from Ola Rotimi, in Nigeria is looking forward to a new deal, something different and sustainable; something that can estricate him from the anguish of poverty and transform his life fast. Because he has been watching the good things of life pass by for too long, he is tired of policies initiatives, moves, reforms, drives, efforts and so on that have never moved his life forward by an inch.
It would be recalled that the Olusegun Obasanjo administration introduced the National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP). The aim was to promote economic and social development and to eradicate poverty in the land by increasing the poor’s access to education, basic health, and to enhance his ability to engage in income generating activities. Thus, NAPEP comprises all the relevant programmes and projects that are targeted towards eradicating all kinds of poverty including case and insular poverty. Case poverty arises amongst those who suffer from some personal, physical, and mental incapacity and insular poverty exists where the entire class of the work force becomes economically obsolete.
But the fact remains that in spite of these efforts, Nigeria is still rated one of the poorest and least developed countries of the world, characterized by low levels of living, low levels of productivity, high and rising level of unemployment and underemployment.
Apparently, whatever goods that have been delivered with poverty eradication approaches in the country, have generally accrued to the tiny ruling class, the power elite, managers and bureaucrats and their cronies. Basic commitments to full employment, free medical services, pension and other social security for peasants and other self-employed people, decent housing for all citizens, general rural pipe-borne water and electrification and feeder roads to benefit the poor are typically accorded low priority in the plans. It seems to me that a lot of leaders produced by the Nigerian nation have been men of human state of consciousness obsessed with the perversions of the mind: lust, greed, and vanity.
The solution to the problem of poverty in Nigeria will begin from a change in the consciousness of the leaders. Unless we have leaders of virtuous disposition, we will keep on getting what we are getting.