President Buhari promised that his government would lift 100 million citizens out of poverty in 10 years, claiming much progress on it, recently. However, in this article Kenneth Eze examines the realities.
President Muhammadu Buhari recently brandished 10.5 million, as the number of people his administration lifted out of poverty within a 24-month period.
He made the assertion in an address to mark the 2021 Democracy Day Celebrations.
“In the last two years, we lifted 10.5 million people out of poverty – farmers, small-scale traders, artisans, market women and the like,” the President said.
Recall that in 2019, President Buhari promised that the Federal Government, starting from his administration, would lift 100 million out of poverty in 10 years.
However, in the broadcast, the President was quick to admit that uncontrolled population growth, the Covid-19 pandemic and other challenges were drowning the efforts of his administration.
Bluntly, he said, “I will be the first to admit that in spite of our efforts and achievements, which are there for all to see, there is still much more to be done and we are doing our best in the face of scarce resources and galloping population growth rate that consistently outstrip our capacity to provide jobs for our populace.”
While many have no issue with the intentions and lamentations of the Buhari administration, what is giving well-meaning Nigerians, particularly those who know, sleepless nights, is the strategy or a seeming lack of a visible roadmap for the attainment of the laudable objective.
President Buhari claimed that his administration focused on farmers, artisans, and petty traders across the federation in the war against poverty.
He explained that part of his administration’s efforts had birthed a register for the poor, with which it had been remitting N10,000 per household, monthly, which he claimed to be a first in Africa.
He said, “We now have a National Social Register of poor and vulnerable households, identified across 708 local government areas, 8,723 wards and 86,610 communities in the 36 States and the FCT.
“Our conditional cash transfer program has benefited over 1.6 million poor and vulnerable households comprising more than 8 million individuals. This provides a monthly stipend of N10,000 per household.”
Economists are wondering how a stipend of N10,000 per month could help meet the basic needs of one household, which by Buhari’s assertion should comprise at least father, mother, and three children over a 30-day period, before talking about lifting them out of poverty.
An economist, Idiah Kpakor, who spoke with The Point, said that the first thing that comes to the mind of the poor is survival, not investment.
“The basic needs of health, food, clothing, shelter, top the priority of the poor, and the sum of N10,000 cannot meet these needs for any household, for a 30-day period, in the present day Nigeria,” Kpakor stated.
In a country of over 200 million people, infamous as the poverty capital of the world, the President’s assertion would have been cheery news. But the public has been searching for the beneficiaries of the government’s efforts, without much success.
What is poverty?
It is important to consider what poverty means and when an individual can be said to have been lifted out of poverty.
Investopedia.com states that “poverty is a state or condition in which a person or community lacks the financial resources and essentials for a minimum standard of living. Poverty means that the income level from employment (or other source of living) is so low that basic human needs can’t be met by the individual or community.”
Similarly, the World Bank says, “Poverty is a pronounced deprivation in wellbeing, and comprises many dimensions. It includes low incomes and the inability to acquire the basic goods and services necessary for survival with dignity.”
Characteristics of poverty
On its traits, the World Bank states, “Poverty also encompasses low levels of health and education, poor access to clean water and sanitation, inadequate physical security, lack of voice, and insufficient capacity and opportunity to better one’s life.”
On its part, Investopedia.com says, “Poverty-stricken people and families might go without proper housing, clean water, healthy food, and medical attention.”
The World Bank further explains that poverty is the first of the world’s Sustainable Development Goals.
This underscores how important poverty is to the entire world. Little wonder, the Bretton Wood institution recently updated the global poverty level to $1.90, based on purchasing power parity exchange rates.
“The international poverty line has just been raised to $1.90 a day, but global poverty is basically unchanged,” it says.
Who are the poor?
Investopedia.com opines that acceptable standards of poverty can differ from country from country. “Each nation may have its own threshold that determines how many of its people are living in poverty,” it says.
Using the United States, as an example, Investopedia.com states that the threshold for poverty is set by the Department of Health and Human Services.
From the 2018 and 2017 poverty figures of the US as set out on the online platform, there was a decrease of 1.4 million people, year-on-year.
The global perspective shared by the World Bank is that “about 70 per cent of the global poor, aged 15 and over, have no schooling or only some basic education.”
Driving the point home to Africa and Nigeria, the World Bank points out that “almost half of poor people in sub-Saharan Africa live in just five countries – Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Madagascar.”
It identifies three key root causes of extreme poverty as, Covid-19, conflict and climate change. “Middle-income countries, such as India and Nigeria, will be significantly affected; middle-income countries may be home to 82% of the new poor,” it states.
Famous televangelist, Reinhard Bonnke, during his lifetime, at an outreach in Lagos, asserted that the pain of hunger could be tougher than that of disease in Africa.
“I’ve been long enough in Africa to know that the pain of poverty can be tougher than that of disease,” the German born evangelist said.
That’s how serious the issue of poverty is, as it concerns Nigeria, and Africa.
How can individuals navigate out of poverty?
While the World Bank prides itself as “committed to fighting poverty in all its dimensions,” for which the bank uses “the latest evidence and analysis to help governments develop sound policies that can help the poorest in every country,” Sam Adeyemi, a Nigerian based faith preacher and life-coach, teaches that talent identification and utilisation would go a long way for those who want to get out of poverty.
Addressing students at the Daystar Leadership Academy, he said, each person should look for that area of life where he/she has a gift to impact mankind for value.
Citing several Bible characters, including Abraham and Joseph, he explained that the maxim of teaching people how to fish as against offering them fish could be the atomic bomb against poverty.
According to him, this is why robbers, criminals, politicians and other undesirable elements who bump into huge amounts of money have been consistently unable to navigate their ways out of poverty.
“Why is it that robbers rob an individual of all that he/she has and in a short space of time, the person is able to replace all the stolen items with better ones, while the robbers remain in abject poverty?” He asked.
Similarly, a chartered accountant and financial fitness coach, George Onekhena, famous among his numerous mentees for encouraging goalsetting and goal-getting, strives to inculcate the attitude of astute investment.
His financial fitness philosophy centres around the fact that “unless an individual can sustain his/her chosen lifestyle without recourse to salary or wages for a six-month period, that individual cannot lay claim to financial fitness.”
Whether taking people out of poverty amounts to making them financially fit, or not, what is common in the teaching and coaching of Adeyemi and Onekhena is that people need personal discipline, skill identification and harnessing (investment), before they can aspire to conquering poverty. Where these fit into what the All Progressives Congress government is doing or has done, is for the public to assess.
However, a university don, who spoke with The Point from the United Kingdom, via the telephone, expressed the view that it could be a matter of presidential speak or misspeak, depending on individual paradigm.
She wondered why the APC government was not flaunting its giant strides in exposing erudite Nigerian scholars to quality education at top universities across the world on fully paid scholarship, as part of efforts to eradicate poverty.
Her opinion was that the APC should flaunt the good efforts at exposing bright Nigerian minds to the best possible tertiary education.
“It would be left for the beneficiaries to make their marks, for which the government has invested so much, after graduation, which would then contribute to eradicating poverty from the communities,” she said.
