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An official of the Federal Government few weeks ago revisited the issue of poverty in the land and came up with some presuppositions regarding why poverty has become what it is in the country. He he never failed to provoke controversy alongside. This official agreed there is high degree of poverty in the country which was threatening to boil over. By his admission alone, he gave further dent to the image of the Federal Government to which he belongs and gave validity to the postulation by a foreign agency that our country is today the poverty capital of the world. Before it used to be India.
In the bid to establish the cause, this official entered the lane of blame game. Playing typical to the Nigerian style, he exonerated the Federal Government but put the entire blame on state governors and local government authorities, whom he said spent huge sums on what economists would call «White Elephant» projects. He spoke with some degree of clarity saying they concentrate on building flyovers and big buildings all in the name of development.
He touched the one issue that has remained a burning matter for decades running and that local governments and management of their affairs. He specifically accused state governors of taking away funds meant for that tier of government without explaining why it was possible for such to happen at all and especially under a federal government that has anti-corruption as cardinal policy. His outburst attracted attention, resulting in making the matter a front burner issue in the past two weeks, if not more. The official’s statement was bound to resonate widely for good reasons; poverty stirs the soul and provokes it to ask critical questions.
The level of poverty in our country as already observed is high. It has left us with high number of persons who have become very confused about life. A lot more are very angry and they should be. The general atmosphere has become very suffocating. The closed economic space has added to make things worse. The citizens have become so despondent and vulnerable that any sign of hope increases expectations of possible immediate turnaround. So when a highly placed official of the central government decides to talk on such matter, it must arrest attention and it did as already observed. The matter is still the issue till today hence this contribution from this corner.
The official had a good topic no doubt that much has been established. The motive for revisiting poverty few months to end of tenure of the administration of which he is a part is what is not known even though many suspect crude politicking. Perhaps to divert attention or place the blame where it can shift political liabilities. Nobody can tell really, but what is certain to many of us is the fact that this official who came out to dance in the market place wasn›t very correct on the reasons poverty has become our neighbour. Federal Government and the other tiers of power and administration have their faults, the chief reason is collective failure. It is about “Collective Guilt.” Citizens from the point of independence ought to have asked that right foundation be laid that would be very capable of engineering sound development. Rather than do so, we all followed the crooked ways of the largely unpatriotic political class to run on lines very inimical to good governance and soothing progress.
We embraced sectionalism and nepotism, we allowed it to become state policy. This philosophy still is in operation till today. Those who belong to the “Conquerors” class have cheered on wildly, forgetting that every contradiction would throw up times of reckoning when everyone will see that evil does not produce any good. If anything, it destroys all. If we wanted a productive country the union should have been negotiated and terms for relationship among the component parts agreed on. What this would have achieved would be a buy-in by all. We didn’t do that; consequently we ended up with the principle of “we and them.” This principle is the harbinger of stagnation if not outright destruction and that is what we experience currently.
When we had federalism we made gigantic progress, since after the military came in, not only aborting the structure partially agreed on but redrawing the political architecture to suit certain interest, nothing good has come from the bizarre experience. We all can attest to that. The running philosophy is grab the “grab-able”, kill in the process if that is what it would require to gain undue advantage(s). What this has done is that there is no sense of common ownership.
The other important matter would be that the absence of dialogue and the consensus it would have produced has denied us an ideology. It is elementary lesson to teach that without compass loss of direction becomes inevitable in the high seas. This country is not run on any vision, we are on a flight with no compass, presence of crude oil delayed a crash that would have happened long ago. The gradual switch from oil to other energy is telling on us already. We are not socialist, not capitalist, nobody is talking about communalism, which is nearer our heritage nor welfare state. Our leaders take all, thereby wasting public resources in excess of what is required to execute tasks.
One example is electricity supply. Shamefully our leaders sing the song Nigerians can›t manage public concerns, a lie from the pit of hell. They opted for privatization, now those who bought up public property appropriate huge profits and democratize inefficiency and general lack of sense of direction, yet government that chose the individual initiative approach spends billions each year to prop up the sector ran down by philosophy of recklessness that pervades the land. How can a people that desire to banish poverty kill education by destroying public schools amid high cost of private education? Isn›t this madness? There are many examples of similar distortions to give but we leave it at that.
Controversy over local government would not have been if we were a people who do things right. Local government in the form we have it now would not have been if the interest was not to deceptively appropriate funds accruing to centre from few states in the United Nigeria. We created a bogus system at that level which has turned out since the unit came into being 1976 to be a huge drain on national resources that should have been better deployed to economic activities capable of creating wealth. Instead of industrialization we devoted more efforts to increase bureaucracy. Remember local governments were administrative units, mere district offices during the colonial time, and should have been left that way.
States should have been free to create local units as much as they wanted. This is what you get when intentions are not noble. Narrow aspirations must of certainty throw up deadly aberrations and contradictions. We are there now. We are into the consequences right now. Elephant projects are real, it is the vogue across all the tiers of administration. We put emphasis on things and allocate huge sums of money to them because it will be very easy to pilfer from that angle.
Gestation period of industrialisation is long, going that direction will consume funds and leave nothing for private pockets so it is not an interesting area to receive attention. In development, enablers are different from real factors of development. If one tells you road and electricity rank very low in real factors that make countries great, people will begin to argue even when that is the real fact. Don’t get it wrong, they are vital but there are other things very high up that make life a song worth singing for the majority of citizens in any setting. In this time of science, technology and development, investments in human capacity development is it.
Give citizens very low interest rate for small scale business and see how government can eradicate poverty. Give them mortgage to own houses easily. Give first class health services at easily, very affordable cost and see. Establish mechanised farms every where, add to it allied industries and see the face of the people. Give free productive education. Hmmmm! Our leaders waste so much time talking off point and pursuing vain matters. All these would have been solved if we had a national vision to which all tiers would subscribe and work together towards its realization. Unfortunately, there is no such thing.
