October 9, 2003
At the outset, let's agree on a few points, which are universally acknowledged to be true. Firstly, contrary to what many of us have been told, Nigeria is not one of the rich countries in Africa. Our per capita income of $290.00 makes us one of the poorest countries in the world, and places us in the ranks of such other poor countries as Togo ($270.00), Rwanda ($220.00) and Mali ($210). Secondly, it takes a much longer time for countries to become rich, than for them to become poor. Examples of such countries as Ethiopia, Rwanda, Liberia, and Sierra Leone show that the good work achieved through decades of gradual progress towards leaving the poverty club can be wiped out in only a few months of political crisis, which is usually accompanied by looting the national treasury with impunity. Thirdly, some of the reasons why some people are poor explain why some nations are poor. Rich people cultivate the habits of wealth accumulation and husbanding; they are driven by the urge to be (and remain) rich. And fourthly, though poverty can be alleviated, it is not by sharing money as a political exercise, nor by sponsoring dubious programmes, whose real purpose is political ingratiation.
Who is poor? To measure poverty, we use empirical indices that employ incomes or consumption levels in a particular country or region to classify people as poor or extremely poor. We are classified as poor if our consumption or income level falls below the minimum level necessary to meet our basic needs in our locality. This level is the poverty line or threshold, which varies in place and time. Every country uses an acceptable threshold that is appropriate to its level of development, norms, and values.
Poverty is inevitable in the world, and in every country, including the United States which has just released its poverty report for 2003, showing that more than 12.1 percent of the population (or about 34.6 million people) live below the poverty line. Seven million American families and 12.2 million of their children live in poverty. The poverty threshold for Americans is a family of four that lives below $18,392; for an individual, the amount is $9,183. There are 14 million Americans who live in severe poverty – which is having incomes below half the poverty threshold. The point to note is not that some Americans are poor, but that government and communities are engaged in serious efforts to provide all essential services – especially health and education - to all Americans.
With the per capita income for the world being $7140.00, there must be many poor people around. It is in the nature of the ratio of the world's resources and its population that some people will have more than they need, while others can hardly eke out a living. The four richest people in the world – Bill Gates (worth $46.0 billion), Warren Buffet ($36.0 billion), Karl/Theo Albrecht ($25.6 billion), and Paul Allen ($22.0 billion) have combined assets of approximately $130 billion, which is more than three times the gross domestic product for Nigeria. The world's resources are not equitably distributed among countries – just as the wealth within any particular country is not shared equally among the residents. It is the responsibility of governments to ensure that poor people receive wider access to affordable and better quality services in all the vital areas – especially health, education, water, sanitation, electricity, and most importantly having their voices heard.
What takes a country out of the international poverty club? Many things, not the least of which is financial capability, though poverty connotes more than economic deprivation, and poverty alleviation is more than tinkering with the national economy. World Bank's Chief Economist and Senior VP for Development Economics, Nicholas Stern recommends that economic growth is necessary to accelerate progress in human development, but it is not enough. Poor countries are poor largely because they have undeveloped infrastructures and facilities for health, education, agriculture, governance at a large scale, and law enforcement. They remain poor because they are lack the economic resources and mental preparedness to redress their development deficiencies. The poverty situation is most serious in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria.
The World Bank recently reported that Sub-Saharan African countries have the largest share of people living below one dollar a day. The tragedy is that while other countries in Asia and Latin America are slowly but surely pulling themselves out of the poverty club, African countries, including Nigeria, are regressing into lower levels of deprivation, with the result that the number of poor people in this region is expected to rise from 315 million in 1999 to about 404 million in 2015.
The factors that have got us into the poverty club in the first place are coalescing to get us into deeper morass. Average life expectancy in Nigeria slid from 46.1 years in 2001 to 45.3 years in 2002, while the annual percentage growth of our gross domestic product (which is the sum of gross value added by all resident producers) slipped from 2.9 in 2001 to –0.9 in 2002. Within Sub-Saharan Africa, the annual percentage growth from 2001 to 2002 was 3.2%, showing that Nigeria performed worse than many other countries in the region.
Individual Nigerians feel the pangs of poverty all around them. Collectively as a group, we are steadily sliding down the abyss in the vital sectors of development, and consequently becoming poorer by the day. Among the areas where we are witnessing poverty pains are education, nutrition, health infrastructure, economic development, the spread of HIV/AIDS, and good governance. Unfortunately, when governments design poverty alleviation interventions, they fail to address the root causes of poverty, and rather seek opportunities to make political points, at the expense of our people's lives.
Alleviating Poverty
Poverty at individual and national levels cannot be eradicated like polio or small pox because it is implicated by our mental, physical, emotional, religious, and cultural states of being. It is more complex than getting a vaccination shot in the arm. It however can be alleviated or its ravaging effects can be ameliorated, and thus there is room for well-designed poverty alleviation programmes to address the root causes as well as the impact, symptoms, and manifestations of poverty. Good poverty alleviation programmes take time to design, and need intelligent planning, human and technical resources, and a well-established administrative capacity to implement.
Many of Nigeria's poverty alleviation programmes are papering over cracks on the walls of poverty to disguise or hide the symptoms. Even when we adapt or adopt World Bank programmes, we entrust the implementation to people who do not understand "poverty" and will not recognize alleviation solutions if they met them in a room.
Genuine poverty alleviation must be inter-sectoral and intersect with most other development and social change initiatives of the government, private sector, and the NGO community. The starting point is a measured public education effort, which incorporates but is not limited to the mass media, and relies mostly on personal and community channels to convince us all of the imperative for poverty alleviation. This presupposes that the leaders understand "poverty alleviation" and not see it as sharing the national cake.
Foundation
Genuine poverty alleviation should be founded on these five essential elements: mental and psychological preparation, a multi-sectoral approach, long-term planning, setting of precise targets for a road map, and development of organizational competence. Of all these, the most critical is the mental and psychological re-orientation of our people to accept that Nigeria is not a rich country and that every Nigerian needs a new direction to focus on living within our means, while striving to move a noth up the ladder of self and national development.
There has been no meaningful effort to modify the psychological conditions of our people to prepare them to aspire for a new order of alleviating poverty. The experience with Western capitalism, which everybody is trying to replicate today, shows that psychological conditions of Europeans made possible the development of capitalist civilization and the evolution of a new economic system in the 16th century. Our traditional culture of subsistence economy has influenced our outlook on consuming all we produce, which is not conducive to wealth accumulation. It does not help to believe as many of us do – that the primary job of government is to share money to the people.
Our poverty alleviation programs will continue to fail as long as we continue to conduct business in our usual manner. Without bringing about a mental re-orientation to create a new national ethos, based on the virtues of just profits, rewards and punishment, equity, and social responsibility, our poverty alleviation programs will be ephemeral photo opportunities, and political campaigns for launching one borehole here – and distributing some bags of fertilizers there. Alleviating poverty must start with the hearts and souls of our people, and become real in programs that make health, education, and social services available and affordable to our ordinary folks, as the World Bank has recommended.
So, can we abolish poverty? Poverty is a fact of universal human existence, and will be almost impossible to abolish. However, it is possible and desirable to implement successful poverty alleviation programs that can set us on the path of making health, education, and other social services available and affordable to all. Many of the so-called poverty alleviation programs we hear about today in Nigeria are in fact poverty aggravation projects that can only worsen the economic burden and place future generations of Nigerians in greater peril because these are largely schemes for financial mismanagement and fraud.
