You probably remember that President Muhammadu Buhari once pledged that his government, which many think is a drifting barge, will lift 100 million poor Nigerians out of poverty.
If you do not mind the tautology, it’s just an amateur way of using the double superlative to describe the President’s lofty idea to make life easier for more Nigerians, a goal that he, not too surprisingly, has failed to achieve.
Based on data on basic needs collected from 15 countries with low-income economies, the World Bank defines the extremely poor as those living below $1.90 (or about N1,000) per day.
The Covid-19 pandemic, a huge debt servicing bill, inflation, infrastructure deficit and insecurity have compounded the poverty within Nigeria. It’s interesting that in less than one and half years to the end of his tenure, the President has not conducted a census and paraded the 100 million beneficiaries who became nouveau-rich for their compatriots to see.
The failure may have led Martins Chinedu, who represents Ahiazu/Ezihinite, Imo State, in the House of Representatives, to move a motion for the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment (whose operatives seem to walk with his shoes so that they won’t be heard) to urgently develop a comprehensive template to establish industries across the federation.
The motion, probably taking into account the lackadaisical attitude of the Executive Branch in reducing the unconscionable poverty in the land, mandates the House Committees on Industry and Commerce to ensure compliance by the Ministry, because it seems as if they always drop the ball.
The narrative on the streets is that there are no such nouveau-rich Nigerians, a great disappointment, also a tragedy! Nigerians should not have to endure poverty because they have a government that operates like a paper tiger when it comes to implementing promises it freely made.
You will recall that about 70 million poor Nigerians were declared to have sunk into poverty, thus making Nigeria the capital of poverty in the world. Reports even indicate that the number of the Nigerian poor rose to 93.9 million by mid-2021, a reversal of the President’s promise.
The President had boasted that “the process of developing this inclusive poverty reduction strategy recognised and addressed past mistakes, as well as laid the foundation for sustainable poverty reduction through the wide range of consultancies held at all levels of government, development partners, the private sector and as well as civil society.” If this prattle bores and makes you feel like yawning, you have company here.
The President needlessly argues with himself when he says “If India can lift 271 million people out of poverty between 2006 and 2016, Nigeria can surely lift 100 million out of poverty in 10 years.” By the way, 271 million is about one-sixth of India’s population, whereas 100 million is nearly half of Nigeria’s population.
To achieve his pledge the President inaugurated the National Steering Committee of National Poverty Reduction with Growth Strategy, chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, whom he earlier demeaned by sending him on the undignifying errand of sharing some kind of poorhouse loan that he called TraderMoni or something like that.
For some strange reasons, the President thinks his N-Power programme, which is at best a new and uninspiring version of the Subsidy Investment and Empowerment Programme, or SURE-P, introduced by the equally uninspiring Dr. Goodluck Jonathan Presidency, will be helpful, though, one must admit, it is a youth empowerment programme with bias for skills acquisition.
SURE-P was a harebrained scheme said to be a reinvestment of so-called savings from the removal of subsidy from the sale of petrol. It turned out to be a sheer waste of money, time and effort.
The Jonathan government did not get a thank you for the project that eventually transitioned from ineptitude, through corruption, to a scandal! Both the SURE-P scheme and the N-Power programmes appear to be no more than a dole, paid to put money into the hands of those who remain poor.
Recall that the government recently announced an intention to remove fuel subsidies, a step that it has wisely dropped. The N5000 it said would be paid to 40 million poor people for three months would have ended up as another casualty of near-sighted planning.
An addendum to the issue of infrastructure is that the plan to enhance generation, transmission and distribution, must go beyond tokenism into a grand Marshall Plan. If one will not be accused of reductionism one would say electricity is the most important input for Nigeria’s economic recovery.
Add to that the importance of ensuring the production of petroleum products by domestic refineries. It is needless to say that the failure of government-owned petroleum refineries has led to high importation of petroleum products and also put immense pressure on the Naira.
President Buhari could have profited from the rule book of late President Umaru Yar’Adua to (at least attempt to) lift the 100 million Nigerians out of poverty as he promised during and after his campaign.
Anambra State Governor-elect, Prof Charles Soludo, is quoted to have reported that President Umaru Yar’Adua took interest in the capability of those who would become governors in their states. President Yar’Adua reportedly said if only two states became models of prosperity in each of the geopolitical zones of Nigeria he would regard his presidency as a huge success.
On the contrary, President Buhari is busy searching for ancient and antiquated maps showing cattle routes all over Nigeria, with the intent to pamper the trade group of cattle herders, most of whom belong to his Fulani ethnic stock, who were destroying the farms of their compatriots.
President Buhari does not seem to show any, or much, interest in the economy of the states, not to talk of individuals, the way former President Olusegun Obasanjo intervened to build up millionaires by conceptualising chapbooks like Transcorp, for those with the grit to run them.
As observed by Prof Soludo, who initially shied away from elective politics because of its murky waters, “Most people believe that Nigeria can only be transformed if a critical mass of capable hands take charge at all levels in governance. “In an underdeveloped country such as ours, the potential marginal contribution of one skilled contribution is many times that of his counterpart in the advanced countries. This society loses greatly for every knowledgeable person who stands akimbo as the duty of developing beckons.”
What President Buhari really needed to have done is to create a Marshall Plan to upgrade infrastructure and a radical plan to increase the number of students in all tiers of education nationwide.
When individuals with enhanced work skills get to work in a country that has adequate infrastructure and appropriate macroeconomic policies, it’s akin to when the rubber meets the road, as famously expressed in an advertising copy.
