This Project of Lifting People from Poverty

Last Tuesday, President Muhammadu Buhari inaugurated a National Steering Committee whose main duty is to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in the next ten years. The committee is to work in conjunction with National Poverty Reduction with Growth Strategy (NPRGS).

They way the government talks about this lifting project appears like it is a task that will be executed using some executive cranes. But first, we must commend the president for the initiative which indicates that indeed he knows that there is poverty in the land. What appears foggy is the method of lifting these poor people from poverty.

The promise to lift people from poverty was a major plank of his 2015 campaign. The other dimension of the promise was that three million jobs will be created per year. It sounded good. Like motivational speakers, they held us bound, and floated us on the wings of hope.

But today, the reality is that not only are jobs or more jobs not created, existing ones have been lost almost irrecoverably. COVID-19 pandemic merely worsened our woes.

I do not know how the committee will function. I do not even know what technical thing it will do to achieve this ‘lifting’ task. By the admission of Mr President himself, previous efforts to lift people from poverty had also faced some challenges of slow implementation, inappropriate targeting, absence of adequate resources.

In the face of a shrinking economy, I do not know what magic this committee will perform to walk 100 million people out of poverty in ten years. President Buhari barely has two more years to be in office.

But come to think of it; do we really need these organic bureaucracy to generate wealth? It is the inability to generate wealth that breeds poverty. I guess the government should be concerned about what is incapacitating people from generating wealth.

Yes, government cannot do everything. That is why the private sector is there. All that the government needs to do is to enact policies and programmes that create the enabling environment for the private sector to thrive and blossom.

If the SMEs are active, majority of the people will be gainfully engaged. But when the SMEs are gasping and literally withering, how can they employ others?

There is a huge market in Nigeria. Our population is a great niche. But how have we harnessed it to generate wealth?

At the beginning of this administration, there was a huge talk about the policy of “Ease of Doing Business”. It sounded reasonable and applaudable. The Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo was driving it. They talked about clearing goods from the ports within 72 hours. They talked about getting businesses registered within 72 hours. They talked about speed and efficiency in government dealings. But how long did the talk enjoy validity? It soon got reduced to a tired slogan.

Last February, I cleared my car from the Tin Can Port after three full months, for no fault of mine.

But if Government will ignore all the other issues, does it not know that the lack of stable electricity supply is killer number one of businesses? Does government not understand that many small scale businesses and one-man businesses depend on electricity to stay afloat? But when they have to split their little profits in buying petrol regularly and maintain their generators, they soon get choked and life is snuffed off them. NBS should have the figure of how many such businesses have shut down in the country.

How can people be lifted from poverty when there is no easy access to capital? What is government doing to ensure that the banks are able to lend money to entrepreneurs at reasonable and affordable interest rates? Banks declare humongous profits every year but are by no means helping to grow the economy. What is government (via the CBN) doing about this?

Programmes like Anchors Borrowers’ Programme, or school feeding scheme, or loan support to farmers are just whimperish efforts that cannot even reasonably lift anybody from poverty. Perhaps government should be reminded that it is better to teach a man how to fish than to give him a fish all the time. It is in fixing the basic needs of the economy (like inflation control, creation of job opportunities, security, and conducive business environment etc.) that will mean teaching Nigerians how to fish and not handing us the head of roasted fish every now and then. It nourishes little.

Government should wake up and brace up with the reality on the ground. The paper works from such committees will just be academic documents. It will not achieve the translation of the good intention of government to a positive impact on the lives of the average Nigerian.