TOWARDS POVERTY ALLEVIATION IN NIGERIA by Chukwubuikem J.S. Azoro

TOWARDS POVERTY ALLEVIATION IN NIGERIA

 

Poverty has been a serious challenge to governments in Nigeria.  Its effects, which include lack and deprivation in the basic necessities of life, is worrisome. Poverty humiliates and dehumanizes its victim, inducing lack of certain capabilities, such as that of being able to participate with dignity in societal endeavours. Poverty has earned recognition due to its damaging effects on the affairs of humanity at the local, national and international levels. Indeed, poverty is a snare. 

 

Poverty may be defined as a lack of command over basic consumption needs, i.e., a situation of inadequate level of consumption, giving rise to insufficient food, clothing, shelter and other necessities of life. Thus, poverty is generally the inability to attain a minimum standard of living. A person is considered as poor if he is without any means of subsistence, cannot help himself and cannot cater for his family (if he has any).

 

In 1960, the Federal Office of Statistics report stated that about 15% of the Nigerian populace was poor but by 1980 this had grown to 28 %. In 1985, the FOS estimated that the extent of poverty was about 46% although it dropped to 43% in 1992. However, by 1996, poverty incidence in the country was 66%. The UN Human Poverty Index in 1999 captured the phenomenon more succinctly as it placed the nation amongst the 25 poorest nations in the world. Today, it is estimated that two thirds of the country's 120 million people are poor and this is in spite of the fact that since independence, Nigeria is said to have realized over $300 billion in oil and gas revenues and development aid.

 

Scholars and administrators alike have argued that Nigerians have no reason to be poor because of the abundance of human and natural resources including oil and gas available in the country. For instance, Nigeria realized the sum of over $300 billion from crude oil between 1970 and 1990.  In addition, the government earned over N998.4 billion from crude oil in 2003, yet no meaningful achievement has been made in terms of development.  The reasons for the prevalence of poverty in the country have variously been traced to;

 

• Corruption;
  
• Indiscipline;
  
• Bad governance;
  
• Debt overhang;
  
• Unemployment;
  
• Burgeoning population growth;
  
• Unfocused government policies;
  
• Lack of effective skills training;
  
• Inadequate access to the means of supporting rural development;
  
• Destruction of natural resources, leading to environmental degradation and reduced productivity;
  
• Inadequate access to assistance in terms of loans even on a small scale for those living at the margin and those victimized by transitory poverty;
  
• Lack of inclusive participation, which is the failure to include the poor in the process of designing development programs, etc.
  

 

At independence in 1960 and for the best part of the 1960s, poverty eradication efforts in Nigeria centered on education, which was seen as the key to economic, technological and intellectual development of the nation. Thus, education programmes were implemented alongside agricultural extension services, which encouraged increased food production. The oil boom in the 1970s skewered this outlook as rising global oil prices boosted exports from N4 billion in 1975 to N26 billion in 1980, while GNP per capita rose from $360 to more than $1000. By the time oil prices fell, so did the nation's export receipts. This also translated into negative growth and a fall in GNP per capita to $370 in the 1980s.

 

From 1986 till date, successive governments have tried to address the problems associated with the incidence of poverty through the enunciation of poverty alleviation-related programmes. Whether these programmes have succeeded in alleviating poverty or not is a moot point. Suffice it to say, however, that the first of such programmes called, Operation Feed the Nation (OFN) was enunciated in 1979 by Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo. The programme had the specific focus of increasing food production on the premise that availability of cheap food will mean higher nutrition level and invariably lead to national growth and development. OFN lasted until Shehu Shagari's government took over in 1979. The Shagari administration (1979-1983) shared almost the same poverty reduction idea with his predecessor, introducing the pet project named The Green Revolution, which also emphasized food production.

 

It must be stated though that lack of continuity and shift in approach trailed poverty alleviation programmes since the ouster of Shagari from power in 1983. Each subsequent military administration either came up with a different idea or no idea at all. Poverty reduction programmes became more 'regime specific' because there was hardly any continuity with those initiated by previous governments.

 

The military regime of Gen. Muhammad Buhari (1983-1985) did not have a specific poverty alleviation programme as it clearly focused on fighting indiscipline and corruption. This initiative, known as War Against Indiscipline (WAI), sought to inculcate a military-style regimen of discipline such as queuing for public services, observing road signs and generally sprucing up the national psyche on the distinctions of right and wrong.

 

Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (1985-1993) is known to be one Head of State that introduced a welter of poverty alleviation programmes. These include the Peoples Bank, which sought to provide loans to prospective entrepreneurs on soft terms and without stringent requirements of collaterals. It also regulated to an extent the activities of Community Banks that also sprouted as adjuncts of the Peoples Bank and as sources of cheap funds for communities and their members. Another programme was the Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFFRI) which sought to open up rural areas via construction of feeder roads and provision of basic amenities that would turn them into production centers for the national economy. The DFFRI was on offer as the most comprehensive programme on the nation's war against poverty. Considering the truism that rural populations in Nigeria are significantly poorer than their urban counterparts, this programme targeted this core group. Its premise was not just to open the rural areas, but also the hinterland, which ordinarily would not have been accessible.

 

Another programme that tried to head-off the scourge of poverty by targeting the agricultural sector was the Nigerian Agricultural Land development Authority (NALDA). The Authority was mandated to reduce the prevalence of subsistence agriculture in the country and in its place infuse large scale commercial farming by assisting farmers with inputs and developing land at subsidized rates. Although all these programmes collapsed at one point or the other, one of the programmes enunciated by the Babangida regime, the National Directorate of employment (NDE), has lasted till date. By its mandate, NDE was to design and implement programmes to combat mass unemployment and articulate policies aimed at developing work programmes with labour intensive potentials. From its programmes and its staying power, this was a scheme that could be adjudged as the most successful of Babangida's poverty alleviation policies.

 

The regime of Late Gen. Sani Abacha (1993 – 1998) came up with the Family Economic Advancement Programme (FEAP) in Nigeria's quest for a way out of debilitating poverty. However, this period marked Nigeria's relapse into the global bracket of 25 poorest nations. Significantly, FEAP existed for about two years (1998 – 2000) during which it disbursed loans to cooperative societies nationwide that were production oriented. It is also pertinent to note that spouses of Heads of State joined in the fray with novel programmes that not only elevated the status of these First Ladies but also focused on issues of poverty alleviation, using State funds. Most noticeable were the Better Life for Rural Women heralded by Mrs. Mariam Babangida and Mrs. Mariam Sani Abacha's Family Support Programme (FSP). These programmes also tried to introduce a gender element into anti-poverty programmes, acting on the assumption that women needed special treatment in the light of their immense contributions to the national economy, both as small-scale entrepreneurs and home keepers.

 

Nonetheless, most of these poverty alleviation programmes suffered the same fate, failure, largely due to the fact that:

 

1. They were mostly not genuinely designed to alleviate poverty;
   
2. They lacked a clearly defined policy framework with proper guidelines for poverty alleviation;
   
3. They suffered from polity instability, political interference, policy and macroeconomic dislocations;
   
4. They also lacked continuity;
   
5. They were riddled with corruption, political deception, outright kleptomania and distasteful looting.
   

 

 Taking cognizance of these and the 1999 World Bank report, government was prompted to review the existing poverty alleviation schemes with a view to harmonizing them and improving on them. The Obasanjo Administration, which at inception in May 1999 set out poverty as one of its areas of focus, approved the blueprint for the establishment of the National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP) – a central coordination point for all anti-poverty efforts from the local government level to the national level by which schemes would be executed with the sole purpose of eradicating absolute poverty. Such schemes include: Youth Empowerment Scheme (YES), Rural Infrastructures Development Scheme (RIDS), Social Welfare Services Scheme (SOWESS) and Natural Resource Development and Conservation Scheme (NRDCS). On the whole, these schemes would spearhead the government's poverty-eradication programme. This initiative has been continued under the present administration of Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar'Adua.

 

When NAPEP came on stream in January 2001, it was given a take-off grant of N6 billion ($42.8m). This money was used to establish NAPEP structures in the 36 states, the F.C.T., Abuja and 774 local government councils. Part of the money was also used in the NAPEP employment generation intervention which translated to the training of 100,000 youths, attaching 50,000 unemployed graduates in various places of work, training of over 5000 people in tailoring and fashion design, and the establishment of rural telephone networks in 125 local government areas. Other uses to which the money was converted include the delivery of the Keke-NAPEP, a three-wheeler vehicle project involving 2000 units in all the state capitals of Nigeria, the establishment of 147 youth information centres across the senatorial districts, the delivery of informal micro credit ranging from N10,000 ($71) to N50,000 to 10,000 beneficiaries most of whom were women, and so on.

 

Despite these laudable achievements of NAPEP, the issue of poverty remains prevalent in the Nigerian context. The reasons for this situation are not far-fetched. Firstly, development economic thinking dictates that regular inflows of investment capital into a country laced with a stable political system, good governance, and with the rule of law in operation, is a sine qua non for economic growth and poverty reduction. Unfortunately, Nigeria is officially a politically unstable country. Inflow of foreign investments cannot materialize in an environment of political and economic instability, in view of the truism that money is a coward and does not go where it is not safe.

 

Secondly, Nigeria also has the problem of lack of good governance and corrupt leadership. Power is held by brutal leaders and the state is run like a personal treasury of the leadership. Often, in this kind of situation, the aim is to oppress and subjugate the citizenry, and there is usually little or no hope of realizing a major reduction in poverty.

 

Thirdly, the governance is weak, not simply because of the ill-will of the leaders, but also because the State lacks the resources and technical capacity to manage an efficient public administration, thus placing her in the category of nations without adequate resources to run an efficient public sector.

 

Having subscribed to the UN-inspired Millenium goals of halving global poverty by 2015, Nigeria has embraced the process of outlining its own Poverty Reduction Strategy Process (PRSP) which will eventually bring its anti-poverty efforts into the mainstream of the new global thinking that fighting poverty needed to be driven by some acceptable principles. Experts have opined that given the dismal performance in the past, the PRSP holds some promise for success because poverty programmes are to be derived in an integrated way.

 

In conclusion, poverty is a multidimensional and multifaceted problem. It goes beyond just income. It has political implications, in that it affects people's rights, power relations, and access to resources. That poverty exists in Nigeria is not an exaggeration. It is also a fact that the country harbours most of the poor people in the world. High level of poverty remains inspite of the abundant human and natural resources with which God has endowed this country. What prevails is the poor management of these resources because of bad government, corruption and huge external debt.

 

Successive governments in the country had embarked on one poverty alleviation programme or the other but it is on record that all had witnessed abysmal failure due to successively protracted military and civilian corruption, poor policy design/prescription and implementation. All these have in no small measure contributed to the escalation of poverty in Nigeria. The most scandalous of these failures is the Dr. Haruna Adamu's interim report on the activities of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) which maintains that N135 billion out of the N 146 billion generated for that programme was squandered.

 

Like her predecessors, the current government has embarked on several programmes also on attempt to alleviate poverty. These programmes are structured in such a manner that if successfully implemented, it would alleviate the sufferings of the masses. There is a need to remove all the impediments that would create a cog in the wheel of the success of the programmes, like corruption, ethnic clashes, secession ambition, electoral malpractices among other vices that are agents of poverty in the country. In attempting to alleviate poverty in Nigeria, some strategies that might be worthy of consideration include:

 

• Promoting social and political rights, and the rule of law.
  
• Promoting accountable, transparent and efficient public administration.
  
• Promoting sound economic policies.
  
• Supporting civil societies.
  
• Involvement of the poor in the design and implementation of policies aimed at helping alleviate their poverty.
  
• Ensuring that pro-poor policies target education, health, and housing.
  
• A pronounced effort to elevate the case of women and young ladies on the poverty alleviation agenda, and to tackle erstwhile non-inclusive issues that are specific to them.
  
• The poor should be helped and taught how to co-operatively initiate and implement self-help projects, by first identifying their needs, prioritizing those needs, and designing and implementing strategies regarding same;
  
• NGOs should work closely with the poor and be involved as watchdogs on donor-sponsored poverty alleviating programs.
  
• Government should provide generous and attractive incentives for privately initiated programs aimed at helping alleviate poverty. Such incentives could be in form of grants, tax breaks, or seed capital for starting new economic activities.
  
• Sponsorship of micro-credit programs, which would aid women and girls improve their lot.
  
• Tackling major policy lapses which have deprived agriculture and agri-business the former prominence that these enjoyed in years past. It is however, recommended that a tri-partite approach be adopted in this regard, to include the public sector, private enterprises, and NGOs for accountability. On the private side, included should be farmers at various levels, private agri-business enterprises, and venture capitalists.
  
• On the political landscape, all elected officials must be made to account for their efforts to combat poverty. This should be done at annual town hall meetings held by the constituencies of the elected officials. Failure to produce results after being elected to office should be grounds for a recall, or where there is evidence of corruption and self-enrichment prosecution and imprisonment.
  

 

The above recommendations are by no means exhaustive. But, it is hoped that they would stimulate some discussions, and hopefully some "Quick Win" actions. Poverty can never be entirely eliminated in any society, not even in the U.S., but some measure of success can be achieved by consistently pursuing genuine poverty alleviation policies on a long term basis.

 

 

 

Azoro Chukwubuikem J.S

Faculty of Law,

Nnamdi Azikiwe University,

Awka – Anambra State,

Nigeria.

24/03/10