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Since Nigeria reportedly became the country with the biggest number of the poorest people on earth, the question about how to change the new status has constituted a stiff challenge. Given the enormous powers of the Federal Government, Nigerians look up to it to provide jobs and infrastructure since it is also the highest recipient and custodian of the nation’s resources.
On its part, the Federal Government has expressed worry on the issue. Indeed, President Muhammadu Buhari acknowledged the challenge and set a timeline of 10 years in which, he said, 100 million Nigerians would be lifted out of poverty. Although he provided no clear cut plan to the realisation of the goal, it was his hope that since other nations like Indonesia, India, and China had been able to do so, Nigeria can also follow their example and quit poverty.
The difference, however, has been that the reality of our situation is considerably different compared to those countries. For example, our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate of 2.3 per cent, which is even lower than our birth rate, precludes the attainment of our objective. Even much worse is the state of our infrastructure. The country’s power situation continues to deteriorate and with it the state of the manufacturing industry which is expected to provide the bulk of the jobs to take our school leavers out of unemployment.
In our favour is the fact that we have a vibrant, dynamic population, eager to work if the conducive atmosphere is provided and citizens are encouraged to compete in a free and fair field. We have encouraging vegetation and good weather. We have enough rains to encourage food cultivation. Indeed, we have enough water resources to pursue an all-year-round farming if they can be harnessed. Two years ago, the Ministry of Water Resources promised two dams to each state plus the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, to ensure that Nigerian farming does not end at the end of the rainy season. Not much has been heard of that proposal, yet it is a realistic and vital project that not only would create jobs but accelerate the development of the economy. Good enough, our citizens are increasingly better educated.
We still need to address some of our core beliefs about fatalism, determinism and human equality through which we sometimes justify the unjust wealth of the criminal and the corrupt, and are also tempted to rationalise the unmerited wretchedness of the very poor. We must begin to regard human equality as a first step in confronting the fundamentals of poverty. The world has proved beyond dispute that education is the greatest antidote to poverty. This means a more determined, more robust education policy not only for its own sake but also as an essential element to root out poverty. It means universal, free and compulsory education up to the Middle School level. It is not enough to express pious intention to institute free education or write them into the statute books. It must be like justice. It must not only be done but be seen to be done. That also means the prohibition of any kind of fees, levies, imposed by teachers and headmasters which had subverted the letters and spirit of our free education policy in the past, until the world found that nearly 13 million of our children are out of our school system. And unless those children are recaptured, they are bound to constitute a socio-economic liability in the near future.
It is not enough to educate our children; it is also needful to give them the right kind of education in a new world ruled by knowledge, the world of electronics and the Internet. The world has changed and knowledge is key to opportunities. We must also include a substantial dose of entrepreneurship in our curricula at the Senior Secondary School level and it must be compulsory at the tertiary level.
Our administrative system has been a nightmare for decades and we commend the Federal Government for initiating the ease of doing business efforts. The Corporate Affairs Commission merely enables the formation of ventures, but more work needs to be done in our Customs, Immigration, Licensing, Land Offices which today are still as intractable as our police stations, our courts and health systems. Additionally, the Buhari administration should establish a roadmap out of poverty, set up periodic goals along the route and challenge every Nigerian to work for the reduction if not total elimination of poverty in Nigeria.
