Bill
Clinton
President Clinton did not say
anything new even as he took the critical path in expressing his thoughts on
poverty and that it was responsible for the violence in some parts of the
country. While his contentions on the cause of current violence is open to debate,
his position is a significant wake-up call to a selfish and docile Nigerian
elite on the need to do right by the people.
Once
again, Clinton’s position is nothing but plain emphasis of the obvious. One
of the ever-present and unifying factors in the country today is the
widespread poverty plaguing the majority of the people.
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Although it harbours the potential of
fuelling insurgency as witnessed in the Niger-Delta, those insurgents to their
credit, did articulate their grievances in terms of impoverishment of their
people and environmental degradation.
However, the current insurgency in the
northern part of the country has a different set of logic: the insurgents want
a Sharia state. This for sure is a tall order in a plural and secular
society which Nigeria is.
Which, of course, takes nothing away
from the urgent need to tackle the menace of want in the midst of plenty.
Poverty in Nigeria is not a child of providence, but the consequence of elite
misrule.
The sundry social problems in the
country can be traced to a faulty monolithic economy and a leadership bereft of
ideas and vision of nation-building. Abundant oil wealth, itself a huge
national asset for socio-economic transformation, has become a sore point on
the national psyche.
Successive leaders have not only wasted
the resources of the country on some white elephant projects but also bled the
country through excessive self-indulgence. Half-hearted efforts at
diversification of the economy never paid off. The net effect is the alienation
of the people and their relegation to abject poverty.
In the last one decade, social
indicators about Nigeria have been negative. Transparency International (TI)
has often rated Nigeria as one of the most corrupt countries in the
world.
In 2000, Nigeria topped the list. In
the same vein, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has ranked
Nigeria low on its Human Development Index (HDI) with life expectancy put at 52
years.
Recently, in a damning report, the
Global Financial Integrity said between 2000 and 2009, illicit fund outflow
from Nigeria stood at $182 billion.
By contrast, some countries with less
or equal endowment as Nigeria have taken their people out of poverty. With
strong commitment to poverty reduction, China has maintained a high growth rate
for more than three decades since the beginning of economic reforms in 1978,
with sustained increase in average living standards by World Bank benchmark of
people living on less than $1.25 per day.
Brazil’s progressive social policy of
redistribution has helped it achieve more rapid poverty reduction. In Brazil,
the proportion of the population in poverty is significantly lower than in
China.
Its poverty level fell from about 17
per cent to eight per cent over 1981-2005 with a fair annual rate of poverty
reduction of 3.2 per cent. Venezuela’s unemployment dropped from 14.5 per cent
of the total labour force in 1999 to 7.6 per cent in 2009.
Poverty has also decreased. In 1999,
23.4 per cent of the population was marked as being in extreme poverty, this
fell to 8.5 per cent in 2011.
Nigeria’s leadership on a balance
sheet, advertises macro indicators of growth in the Gross Domestic Product
(GDP), which it claims on the average has grown between 2.7 - 7.10 per cent in
the last one decade or so.
This information is sold to
impoverished Nigerians by all means of propaganda advertorial in ways that
accentuate the irresponsibility of the ruling elite. These leaders are,
however, to be reminded that the economy is growing in GDP terms but people are
not being lifted out of poverty.
Real development is one that is
sustainable and in which there are infrastructural and industrial productivity
as well as the improvement in the wellbeing of the people.
The prevalent system in which
over 70 per cent of the annual budget is expended on recurrent expenditure
largely in the form of remuneration and perquisites for top political office
holders, is not one in which the goals of development are ever achievable.
Beyond the material poverty of the
people is the poverty of ideas amongst Nigeria’s leaders. Successive leadership
has demonstrated incapacity to articulate any vision for the country’s
tomorrow.
They have failed to come to terms with
the universal truth of governance: that it is about the people. The consequence
of their inaction and paralysis is the prevalent social problems confronting
Nigeria today. In the past, leadership in some parts of the country
de-emphasized human capacity development and expressed evident disdain for
Western education, which therefore created a fertile ground for perverted
consciousness that has become the determinant of religious extremism.
Given the abundant resources at the
nation’s disposal, Nigerians ought not to be helpless and hopeless. Unfortunately,
the resources have not been well utilized for the good of the people.
Rather, they have been rampantly looted
by the leaders, an inept lot on whose watch the country continues to bleed. So,
while public officials mouth empty rhetoric about the country not being broke
while mismanaging the nation’s resources, poverty holds the majority of
Nigerians in its pangs.
It is a shame.
Source: The Guardian
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