Nigeria’s System: Poverty Alleviation and Palliative Measures
By Jamilu M. Ja’afaru
Poverty is one of the major obstacles to growth and has many different faces. It is a condition in which people lack access to necessities of life as well as the ability to achieve the ideal state of wealth and a socially acceptable way of life. It turns out that the prevalence of poverty is typically very high in Nigeria, with close to 80% of the population living below the poverty line and having limited access to social and infrastructure amenities. 43 per cent of Nigerians (89 million people) live below the poverty line, while another 25 per cent (53 million) are vulnerable Around the world, billions of people struggle to survive in inhumane conditions that are exacerbated by hunger, disease, necessity, and corruption. In spite of Nigeria’s abundance of natural resources like oil, gas, undiscovered poorly explored mineral deposits, and human resources, poverty is still ravaging through the very fabric of the society. Data released by the NBS on multi dimensional poverty shows that roughly 133 million (representing 63%) of Nigerians are poor. Nine out of the ten poorest states are in the north thus: (Kebbi State With 72% Poverty Index, Bauchi State With 73% Poverty Index, Zamfara State With 73.98% Poverty Index, Adamawa State With 74% Poverty Index, Gombe State With 74.6% Poverty Index, Ebonyi State With 80% Poverty Index, Katsina State With 80% Poverty Index, Jigawa State With 87.02% Poverty Index, Taraba State With 87.72% Poverty Index Sokoto State With 87.73% Poverty Index
Nigeria is a nation with an abundance of resources, including abundant arable land, copious stream water, a sizable land area for construction, and a big pool of human capital and other enrichment.
The most populous nation by population in Africa, the seventh most populous nation globally, and the eighth-largest exporter of unrefined petroleum in the world, with a variety of different assets (Population Reference Agency Nigeria currently ranks low on the human development index (158th out of 189 countries), with 39.1% of its population living below the US$1.90 per day poverty line despite having enormous wealth, far behind other sub-Saharan African countries like Rwanda (60%), Zambia (64.4%), and Mozambique [68.7%] (UNDP, 2018).
According to the June 2018 World Poverty Clock report, 86.9 million people in Nigeria spend less than $1.90 per day. However, by February 2019, an additional 3 million people had fallen into extreme poverty, bringing the total number of Nigerians living in abject poverty to more than 91 million. Likewise, the Public MPI 2022 reports that 63% of Nigerians are extremely poor.
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In contrast to some other African countries, where complex poverty is more prevalent in rural areas, Nigeria has the highest number of people living in extreme poverty (86.9), followed by Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa, and Zambia with respective numbers of 19.9 million, 14.7 million, 13.8 million, and 9.5 million (Overall Poverty Clock, 2018).
Palliative Care and a Reduction in Poverty; the China’s Model in perspective China’s breathtakingly swift pace of development, which has propelled it out of the ranks of the world’s poorest countries and into a global economic force to be reckoned with, started with economic changes that the nation’s leaders started in the latter part of the 1970s.
At that time, more than 80% of China’s population resided in the provinces, and 85% of Chinese people were living in abject poverty.
The family obligation framework was one of the main improvements that was used to improve the existences of provincial people. Families received land under this system, and ranchers were allowed to retain earnings from any enterprise that went above and beyond planned payments to the state.
Ranchers had the choice to keep the rewards they earned by applying their own consistent labor and desire, which was how this modification came about. Ranchers were encouraged by this motive, and during the course of six years between 1978 and 1984, provincial incomes increased by almost 14% annually.
Agricultural cooperatives were identified as a potential solution as rural income, sanitation, food security, and obstinately persistent elevated levels of rural poverty were all challenges that needed to be addressed.
Everyone agrees that cooperatives are the only unquestionable method that has made a significant effort to improve the lives of agrarian and the rural poor.
The National People’s Congress passed the Law on Specific Farmer Cooperatives in 2006 after carefully examining Chinese and international experience; it went into effect on July 1 of that same year. Cooperatives have never before since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 received a legal personality.
Today, the number of people in China living on less than $1.90 per day, or the World Bank’s definition of poverty, has decreased by around 800 million over the past few years. As a result, China moved 800 million people out of poverty using the helpful approach. It sets a new world record.
With this, China has helped to reduce the number of people living in abject poverty globally by over 3/4. A collaborative report titled “Forty Years of Poverty Decrease in China: Drivers, Experiences for the World, and the Far Ahead” examines this achievement – was endorsed by the World Bank, the Development Research Center (DRC) of the State Committee, and the China Ministry of Finance, with the China Center for International Knowledge on Development (CIKD) serving as the implementing body.
China’s strategy for reducing poverty is based on two pillars.
The first was expansive based economic reform, a strategy that expands economic opportunities and raises standard wages. The second was the admission that targeted assistance was anticipated to lower persistent poverty. As a result, assistance was first provided to geologically disadvantaged areas and then to specific households. Effective management helped to coordinate multiple government agencies and encourage cooperation from non-governmental partners, which benefited China’s economic development and the corresponding decline in poverty.
The evolution of China’s approach to reducing poverty ultimately led to the adoption of social assurance policies that designated and transformed the impoverished into the kind of economic marvel that the rest of the world admires. It focuses on the need to fill remaining gaps in quality training between rural and urban areas, improve social security for temporary workers, and expand the integration of the many existing social security policies.
The best thing to do is figure out how to organize the recipients in different states into cooperative societies and train them in agricultural sectors where they have a comparative advantage, such as poultry, fish, snail, rice farming, etc. if Nigeria’s leaders truly want to alleviate poverty or use the palliatives as a springboard to rescue Nigerians from poverty.
You wonder the kind of people we are! Other nations focused on wealth creation,diversifying their economies and providing opportunities for their citizens. China, India, and other BRICS nations have decreased the number of the poor.
The answer to reducing poverty is wealth generation. Palliative care has never lifted people out of poverty and never will. It would be wise to direct resources on developing skills, value chain for commodities, clustering, and industrial development rather than the N8,000 palliatives which in the end would not be sustainable.
Jamilu M. Jaafaru is a social development soecialist and writes from Abuja
