By Austin Oboh
When the United Nations World Food Programme recently reported that Nigeria faces imminent food crisis, owing mostly to insecurity in the North and other parts of the country, I suddenly remembered that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had, in the last few years, spent massive funds on agricultural programmes nationwide, especially in the North. At some point, the Federal Government boasted that the country would soon be eating what it produces. I was profoundly happy about the prognostics of a better day, like every other Nigerian.
Because
if there is anything I detest, it is the unexplainable habit of importing what
can be produced here. I have never understood the madness, and never will. You
can, therefore, imagine my sadness that what I feared all along was going to
happen – that billions of laudable investment in food production might be lost
to unaddressed social problems. It ought to have been clear to the Federal
Government that a nation in war is a nation in crisis. So, where was the root
of the government’s optimism when it was obvious to all, especially to those in
power, that the state of insecurity in the country had reached such putrid
state that nothing would be spared the foulness?
But
the Nigerian govt has always behaved like it is nothing to worry about – at
least, official attitude betrays this. The Federal Government has been blowing
hot and cold in its war against terrorists and bandits, threatening to crush
them at some point only to turn round the very next moment and appeal to them
to drop their guns, especially when it appears the criminals are gaining the
upper hand.
You
can call this the weapon of threat and blandishment. Nothing the Federal
Government has done in its military campaigns against terrorists and bandits
have made as much impact as to generate the kind of optimism government
officials often express. I have personally long concluded that those in power,
cushioned by their privileges against the reality, have never truly understood
what the country is going through. That, possibly, is why they believe that
food programmes would thrive and the Nigerian people would soon become
self-reliant despite the raging wars.
And
in the same spirit of political naivety – which has been so much on display
since 2015 – the Federal Government, on Tuesday, inaugurated another laudable
programme which, however, is doomed to fail like others before it.
I
am referring to the inauguration of the National Steering Committee (NSC) of
the National Poverty Reduction with Growth Strategy (NPRGS). The development
filled me with a mix of elation and sadness, because, again, I realised that it
has no chance of making much impact.
At
the event, the president repeated his outlandish promise to lift 100 million
Nigerians out of poverty in ten years, according to him, with a well-researched
framework for implementation and funding, as though previous implementation and
funding frameworks were perfunctorily designed.
Now
that I think of it, poverty reduction programmes by successive governments in
Nigeria have become a tedious experience to me even though I cherish their
cosmetic desire to improve the lots of the increasing millions whom they have
helped impoverished. Government’s resort to such ad hoc solutions in the face
of profoundly enduring social problems does in itself demonstrate a poverty of
thinking or a blatant refusal to confront the bitter realities of our time.
Before I am misunderstood, let me make it plain that I am not against efforts
to cushion the impact of hard times on people; I only object to the habit of
ignoring the root and treating the symptoms of a disease.
The
stop-gap measures called poverty reduction programmes, now treated as permanent
measures in Nigeria, have been with us in the last three decades without
intrinsically changing the social conditions of the same category of people for
which the programmes have been instituted. So, it was a languid feeling of déjà
vu for me on Tuesday when the Federal Government came up with its stampeded
version of poverty reduction, or poverty pacification – an expression which
appears more apt, for me, in this context.
Have
our leaders considered the advice of Jim Yong Kim that dealing with poverty is
a much more serious affair than constructing financial drains? The former World
Bank president saw the matter more broadly as a factor of economic growth. “We
will never be able to end poverty,” he said, “unless economies are
growing.”
Now,
this opinion directs our attention to the need to look more directly at
critical systemic factors embracing security, infrastructure, financial
policies, education, justice system, and health – all of which are in varying
phases of dysfunction at present. Why do we have to continually drive resources
into superficial projects which only promise temporary relief for a few when,
indeed, what is needed is to resolve the hydra-headed crises in our country
today?
Consider,
for example, the dilemma in the agricultural sector already alluded to.
According to a recent report by the World Food Organisation, Nigeria faces
imminent famine as a result of insecurity in most parts of the country which
has made farming hazardous.
Why
would the Federal Government continue to spend colossal funds on projects that
would not resolve the complications in those areas mentioned, knowing too well
that the gains would eventually be vitiated? Insecurity, darkness, and bad
roads are the biggest challenges and causes of poverty in Nigeria. Whoever
resolves these resolves the poverty that the people have known for ages and
which has currently reached its most pathetic point.
I
am not unmindful of Buhari’s promise concerning the new programme but my
argument is that these programmes have become effete in Nigeria on account of
the endemic tendencies that hold progress hostage – the toxic environment of
insurgency, banditry, and regional turmoil. What the Federal Government ought
to do in the circumstances is not to assume that the country’s state of anomie
will give way for ad hoc programmes to succeed. This is wishful thinking. The
government must, as a matter of urgency, reinforce its war against insurgency
and banditry and then initiate the process of addressing the socio-political
upheavals in some parts of the country with the aim of restoring peace for
progressive schemes to succeed.
The
present government’s insistence on political rigmaroles has jeopardised the
economy despite all the efforts so far made. A new World Bank report says that
Nigeria under President Buhari will lose the economic gains it made in the last
decade at the end of 2021.
“By
the end of 2021, Nigeria’s GDP is likely to approach its 2010 level, thus
reversing a full decade of economic growth,” the bank in its new report
said.
The
World Bank’s projection comes as Nigeria strives to recover from the multiple
recessions that hit the country in 2016 and 2020.
The
bank, in the report, said that there would be a constant decline in the
country’s GDP per capita despite recovery from recession, projecting the country’s
population to grow faster than its economy.
The
bank further predicted that despite the country’s gradual recovery from the
2020 recession, Nigerian masses would continue to suffer the adverse effect of
the economic downturn.
While
applauding President Buhari for taking bold steps to reform the country’s
deteriorating economic condition, the bank advised the government to deepen its
recent reforms that allow private sector investment for speedy economic
recovery.
Apart
from the COVID-19 pandemic, the controversial fiscal and monetary policies of
the Buhari administration and the Central Bank were also largely blamed for the
recession.
So,
here we are – the land of the poorest but ironically the country with the most
extravagant government in the universe – striving to erase poverty by
consolidating it. The more the Federal Government sets up schemes, ostensibly
to improve the people’s lives, the deeper they sink into deprivation and
squalor. Has the government ever realised this? How come, as the years roll by,
Nigeria and her people depreciate and degenerate despite countless schemes
targeted at empowering them?
Isn’t
it time we stopped fooling around with schemes which look like they were
hatched in the Academy of Lagado (courtesy, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s
Travels)? They are just drainpipes and possibly some ephemeral relief to a
miniscule patch of the earth. Now, it all seems as if poverty has found a
comfortable home in Nigeria. The socio-political morass here is benumbing. I
have lived long enough in this country to know what I am complaining about. I
was born, bred, and (unfortunately) battered here. So, let no one tell me about
what I already know.
Even as I make my observations, I am aware
that economic experts hold the view that poverty eradication programmes could
significantly impact on the lives of the beneficiaries, but what am concerned
about here is the overall effects on the masses? I would rather have a
government that adequately funds education, pursues equality and justice, addresses
all social ills in the society, including lopsided appointments, and
realistically drives infrastructural development to a government that
selectively dishes out handouts.
*Oboh is a commentator on public issues
