- It’s time for a new approach
There has been a great deal of finger-pointing and hand wringing since the Brookings Institution ranked Nigeria at the bottom of the international poverty index, supplanting India which had for long borne the dubious distinction of being home to the largest number of people subsisting in extreme poverty, defined as those living on just under $2.00 a day.
The raw numbers do not adequately convey the stark difference in the dimensions of poverty in the two countries. An estimated 87 million Nigerians, or about one-half the estimated national population, are trapped in extreme poverty — persons for whom obtaining basic necessities such as food, clothing, shelter and healthcare is a grim, daily struggle. In comparison, India has 40 million people, less than five percent of the national population, living in this condition, according to the Washington-based think tank.
The medium-term prospects are even more sobering. Because Nigeria’s population is growing at a faster rate than the economy, and India’s population is growing at a slower pace than the economy, the gap between those living in extreme poverty in Nigeria vis-à-vis India is guaranteed to grow wider.
Poverty is nothing new in Nigeria, nor for that matter in India. It has for long been one of the defining attributes of both countries. There was a time when India lived “from ship to mouth,” when it relied heavily on food shipments from donor countries to feed its teeming population. At that time, Nigeria had attained food sufficiency in a booming agricultural economy.
Today, India is a net food exporter, thanks to a successful Green Revolution. If food scarcity persists in some pockets of the country, it is because of breaks in the distribution chain, not because there is a shortage.
Spirited efforts to achieve a Green Revolution in Nigeria have proved ineffectual. But Nigeria has regressed to the point where, even with its oil wealth, it has to import massive quantities of rice and other edible commodities to meet surging demand.
By imaginative planning, sustained effort, and investment in education, science, technology, engineering and mathematics well before STEM became a global mantra, India vaulted itself into the ranks of the 20 most developed nations and a global leader in Information Technology.
Education in Nigeria has been diffuse, unfocused.
Development strategies that have succeeded in reducing poverty elsewhere get unstuck when applied in Nigeria. The nation is littered with the graveyards of development-oriented schemes and institutions like Operation Feed the Nation, The Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructures, Better Life for Rural Dwellers, Poverty Alleviation Programme, Peoples Bank, National Poverty Eradication Programme, Oral Rehydration Therapy, National Immunisation Programme, free universal basic education and SURE-P.
Launched with fanfare and pursued with varying degrees of enthusiasm, but they vanished all too quickly from the public radar even as poverty they were designed to reduce increased intractably.
What went wrong?
We must go beyond the finger-pointing and hand wringing to examine the fundamental assumptions behind the schemes, to re-examine the structural framework within which they have been pursued, as well as the constraints on implementation.
All too often, it is assumed that something government does for the polity rather than what people do to and for themselves, with government at best as catalyst, is the best for them. The blueprint is handed down from the metropolis, made by a self-absorbed political and bureaucratic leader who knows little about the people and the environment for which it is designed.
Public participation rarely reaches the point where citizens see the project as their own; take ownership of it and give it momentum.
Projects are often embarked upon without adequate planning, and without investigating why similar plans had failed. Errors are thus perpetuated. Or projects are established for political reasons. When the political winds shift direction, the projects are abandoned or cease to be priorities.
Funding, rarely adequate to begin with, soon dries up. In whatever case, no amount of funding can withstand the pervasive corruption ravaging the system. But only a few of those who embezzle development funds ever suffer punishment commensurate with the crime – assuming they ever get prosecuted.
Monitoring and maintenance are spotty, with the result that schemes and projects commissioned one year fall apart the very next year.
This cannot be the way forward.
Education policy will have to be oriented toward STEM.
With the population increasing at an annual rate of three percent, development gains will hardly make a dent on poverty. A realistic population policy will have to be fashioned as well.
The public will have to be involved in the choice, design, implementation and evaluation of intervention schemes.
The lesson must be taught that corruption does not pay and will not be rewarded. Leaders, driven by an ethic of public service, must lead by example.
There have been too many false starts and missed opportunities. For far too long, the nation has been throwing money at problems in the vain hope that they will go away. The Brookings Institution report is pointer to the failure of our development effort on a broad front.
It is time to embark on a new approach.
