POVERTY IN NIGERIA

 

Extreme poverty is a more serious problem for the world than climate change, terrorism or the state of the economy (BBC world service global poll 2010).

Poverty is a naked reality that can be asserted objectively and fell-subjectively. It is oldest and yet unresolved social problem (Bradshow, 2006). Historically speaking, the problems of poverty started with the early formation of human society. Societies of the past and present are either satisfied between the slaves and owners, feudal lords and serfs, or the capitalists and the working class between the “haves” and the “have nots” or “rich” and “poor”. The opportuned, privileged, educated and sheltered the healthier and secured social group, while the “poor” are the opposite deprived, depressed and diseased. (Haralambos, 2004).

Worldwide, the number of people living in extreme poverty in 2009 in expected to be from 55millon to 90million higher than anticipated before the global economic crisis, though the impact will vary across regions and countries. Current projections suggest that overall poverty rates in the developing countries will still fall in 2002, but at a much more slower pace than before the downturn. For some countries, this may mean reaching their poverty reduction target. In sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, both the number of poor and the poverty rate are expected to increase further in some of the more vulnerable and low-growth economics (MDGs report 2009).

The report also observed that prior to the economic crisis and higher food prices, the number of people in the developing regions living in extreme poverty – on less than $1.25 a day in 1990 will increase to 1.4 million in 2005. As a result, those considered extremely poor accounted for slightly more than a quarter of the developing world’s population in 2005, compared to almost half in 1990.

There was a dramatic fall in the poverty rate in Eastern Asia – thanks, in large part to rapid economic growth in China, which helped lift 474 million people from extreme poverty. Elsewhere, progress has been slower and, in some regions growing population have caused the ranks of the destitute. To swell. Sub-Saharan Africa counted 100million more extreme poor people in 2005 than in 1990. And the poverty rate remained above 50 percent (though it had began to decline after 1999). Globally, the target of reducing the poverty rate by half by 2015 seems likely to be achieved. However, some regions will fall far short, and as many as 1million people are likely to remain in extreme poverty by the target date.

According to the World Bank (2008), the developing world is poor than we thought, but no less successful in the fight against poverty. Shaohua c, (2008) argues that 95 percent of developing world’s population lived on less than $10 a day. Using 2005 population numbers this is equivalent to just under 79.7 percent of world population and does not include population living on less than $10 a day from industrialized countries.

With the population estimated at about 140 million, Nigeria is the largest country in Africa and one-sixth of the black population in the world. It is the 8^th largest deposit of natural gas in the world. There are also abundant solid mineral deposits that remained largely untapped. Currently, barely 40percent of its arable land is under cultivation with over 100 tertiary institutions producing more than 200,000 graduates per annum (soludo, 2006). Starting as it may be, about two-thirds of Nigerian people are poor, yet Nigeria is a country with vast potential wealth. Although revenues, from crude oil have been increasing over the past decades, our people have been falling deeper into poverty (chukwuemeka, 2009).

As far back as 1980, an estimated 27 percent of Nigerians lived in poverty. By 1999 about 70 percent of the population had income of less than S1 a day and the figure has risen since then (NEEDS, 2005). Poverty levels vary across the country, with the highest proportion of poor people in the North-west and North-east as 77.7 percent and 76.3 percent respectively. And the South–west recorded the lowest. With 59.1 percent. Sokoto had the highest at 81.2 percent, while Niger had the lowest at 33.8 percent during the review period (Kunle, 2010). The classical example to underscore the scope of misfortune is to compare Nigeria with Indonesia and even Malaysia. By 1972 before Nigeria and Indonesia had the first oil boom contends, both countries were comparable in almost all spheres: agrarian societies, multi–ethnic and religious societies, with comparable size of GDP, etc (chukwuemeka, 2009). In the same vein, both Nigeria and Indonesia experienced oil boom in 1973 and thereafter, took different policy choices. The outcomes of the differences in policy, regimes are such much that today, while manufactures as percentage of total exports is about 40 percent in Indonesia, it is less than 1 percent in Nigeria where we were in 1970s. It will be recalled that even Malaysia that has overtaken Nigeria got her first palm seedlings from Nigeria in the early 1960s, when oil palm produce was already a major export of Nigeria. In the 1990s. It was said that Malaysia’s export of palm oil produce earned it more than Nigeria earned oil exports (soludo, 2006).     

Nigeria emerged from colonial states as a poor country. Her situation is weakened by poverty, disease and ignorance. Poverty in Nigeria is multi–selected, multi–dimensional and multi–disciplinary. The Nigerian economy until recently has been characterized by the paradox of growth without poverty reduction and the tickle down effect of growth or the poor, slow response of government to the endemic and persistent of poverty and poor governance.

Poverty as far as the Nigerian society is concerned, is an endemic disease that has refused to respond positively to all prescriptions and treatments offered by “economic and political surgeons” since independence. We also observed in the face of these numerous policies, strategies and programmers put in place with the major aim of alleviating poverty in the country that, the gap between the rich and the power is widening, giving rise to chronic hunger, per capita income dwindling, unemployment condition worsening, inflation rate skyrocketing and the general socio-economic welfare of the majority deteriorating on daily basis (Goshit, 2004).         

The fight against poverty has been a central plank of development planning since independence in 1960 and about fifteen ministries, fourteen specialized agencies, and nineteen donor agencies, and non-governmental organizations have been involved in the decades of this crusade but about 70 percent of Nigerians still live in poverty (soludo, 2003:27). Observers have unanimously agreed that successive government interventions have failed to achieved the objectives for which they were established (Ovwasa, 2000: 73; Adesopo, 2008: 219 – 222; Omotola, 2008: 505 – 512). The failure to effectively combat the problem has largely been blamed on infrastructural decay, endemic corruption, and poor governance and accountability (Okonjo – Iweala, Soludo and Mukhtar, 2003:1).