Charles Onunaiju
At the event to mark the significance of the widely acclaimed credible, free and fair but annulled election held on June 12, 1993, and honour its presumed winner, late MKO Abiola, President Buhari said “with leadership and sense of purpose, we can lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years”, having earlier pointed out that to “…lift the bulk of our people out of poverty and unto the road to prosperity…is by no means unattainable,” adding “China has done it, India has done it, Indonesia has done it. Nigeria can do it.” In claiming that “China and Indonesia succeeded under authoritarian regimes,” President Buhari breached the simple rule of diplomatic etiquette by referring to friendly countries in labels stick at them, by their ideological foes. China and Indonesia have never admitted to being authoritarian regimes but are democracies with their unique national conditions.
Delivering a report at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2017, general secretary of the party and also President of the country, Xi Jinping said that “no two political systems are entirely the same and a political system cannot be judged in abstraction without regard for its social and political context, its history and its cultural traditions”. In underscoring the fact that “No one political system should be regarded as the only choice,” he told the party delegates that “we should not just mechanically copy the political system of other countries,” and further exhorted them, that “we must uphold in long term, and steadily strengthen China’s Socialist democracy, make active and prudent efforts to reform of the political system of improving the institutions, standards and procedures of Socialist democracy.”
And because China has in the past 40 years, since her modernization drive and economic reforms, lifted more than 840 million people out of poverty, became the second largest economy in the world, it is very important to pay serious attention to the context of the country’s enigmatic transformation than the simplistic approach of sticking a label.
Mr. Narenda Modi, India’s prime minister who just won a second term in office, in his first term connected all the 600, 000 Indian villages to the national electricity grid and built 92 million toilets in his commitment to eradicate “open defecation.” For the more than 1 billion Indians, Modi has inaugurated 57 person-member cabinet including a prime-minister for his second term in office with a vow to bringing clean drinking water to every Indian home. As President Buhari said in his speech, it is absolutely attainable to lift a hundred million Nigerians out of poverty in ten years or even earlier, if there is focused leadership with a sense of commitment. Former Brazilian President Mr. Lula Silva and his Workers Party lifted over 30 million of their citizens out of poverty.
However, to take measures that would lift one hundred million Nigerian out of poverty within ten years or even earlier, it is important to review some critical national institutions and how they can blend to the strategic goals of poverty reduction and eradication. The review of the institutions must be done in the context of the national existential reality, not in the abstract.
Only in the context of their measurable outputs can they functionally contribute to the strategic goal of poverty reduction and elimination. More importantly, the meaning of poverty, it implications for its victims and national development should be objectively assessed. Poverty reduction or elimination is not charity or any humanitarian gesture towards victims of the scourge. In fact, victims of poverty are simply arrested and unaccounted national assets, a missing link in the totality of the national productive capacity. They constitute an un-mobilized national resource that subtracts substantially from the aggregate national endowments. Poor persons are redundant national assets and no serious leadership can afford complacency, when a huge swath of its national resources is untapped or depreciates in the constant erosion of values, inflicted on the majority of its population by the scourge of poverty.
To lift people out of poverty must be a fundamental policy imperative, designed to purposely to unleash chains of value creation and multiplication in a bid to guarantee sustainable and inclusive development. To understand the imperative of poverty reduction and eradication as a condition for inclusive and sustainable development means to engage a policy framework that has its context in the national reality and focused on wealth creation. Economic policy targeted at poverty reduction must address itself to critical linkages in the construction of integrated economy in which strategic network of economic activities is linked to a domestic market, the sure-footed guarantor of self-reliance. Effective domestic market provides the necessary comparative advantage and specialization to enable any nation to seek integration into the global value chain.
Any meaningful policy framework on poverty reduction must focus on revitalization of rural infrastructure such as the network of feeder roads that connects villages with one another, allowing them to trade in goods and services. Rural electrification will support simple processing machinery which would form the nucleus of secondary industries. The multiplier effects of this kind of activity would be to create a value chain stretching up to the cities and enabling a creation of a vibrant market that can nurture local start-ups and unleashed a chain of entrepreneurship across the board. Investment in rural infrastructure would however have to go hand in hand with investment in social infrastructure like rural dispensaries as the focus of primary health care delivery, rural water scheme and a compulsory primary education scheme that leaves no child behind.
A massive scheme of rural infrastructural revitalization can reverse the trend of massive drift of local population to the urban centers and even trigger a return of artisans and other lumpen proletariat to participate in the rewarding labour of rural community renewals. Handouts like the current government program of social investment such as the tradermoni, payment of stipend to the poorest people cannot have as much effect as creating an economic value chain in which poor people can participate as value creators and wealth builders.
TraderMoni and other such other social scheme do not create or multiply value, but simply re-distributes the existing value which for, lacking in value addition simply diminishes the existing value. Poverty cannot be eradicated by distribution and redistribution of the existing value and wealth even as fair and just as that might be seen, but in unlocking new wealth avenues, through which values are created and multiplied. In fact, the over 500 billion naira so far spent on federal government social investment program which consist of primary school feeding, tradermoni, cash transfers and others would have considerably fixed the rural infrastructure and enable poor people not only to climb out of it but to integrate into the productive value chain as wealth creators.
The fact is that even if the existing Nigeria’s national wealth consisting in the already proven assets and resources are fairly and justly distributed which is far from the case now, without mobilizing the redundant assets locked away in millions of Nigerians gripped by poverty, it will be inadequate to address the challenge of improved living conditions for the people.
Lifting people out of poverty is a serious issue that spans the trajectories of profound introspection, analytical engagement with the reality of our unique condition, appropriate and consistent policy framework derived from such engagement and meticulous policy execution in which all key institutions are blended to the strategic objectives.
Onunaiju, research director, Centre for China Studies, Utako, Abuja