Last week while hosting the 36 state governors in his office, President Bola Tinubu made a profound statement when he said “Poverty is not hereditary, it is from the society. Our position is to eliminate poverty.” He then called on the governors to collaborate with him to defeat poverty in Nigeria.
It is my considered opinion that poverty seems to be gaining ground because, while other countries concentrate on wealth creation, Nigeria seems obsessed with poverty reduction. China and India reduced the number of poor people in those countries by improving the economy and creating opportunities for their people. So, wealth creation is the key to poverty reduction.
Poverty alleviation and wealth creation are similar phenomena which produce two different results because they have two different targets. While poverty alleviation is aimed at helping people cope with poverty through palliatives, the focus of wealth creation is to rid the poor of their poverty by giving them skills that would enable them to generate wealth on their own. These two phenomena deploy different strategies; hence the different results they achieve.
Many in this country are fixated on poverty alleviation, not wealth creation. Their intention is to help people manage their poverty, not to deliver them from it. That is why as part of their poverty alleviation programme, they give out two bowls of rice, millets or garri, some tablets of soap and a few naira notes to the poor. Pray, how far can those items take anybody? The items are soon consumed and the poor are back where they were. They again turn to government or others, hoping for a handout to make it to another day.
When some state governments want to create jobs for the poor, they give sub-human employment. Imagine employing a university graduate and paying him N10,000 or N20,000 monthly, that is less than two dollars a day. This already makes him an inmate in the prison of poverty. The question to ask is how many of those ‘benefactors’ would encourage their own offspring to take up such appointments? Yet when they do this they make so much noise about it that the public is sometimes deceived into believing that the government has done something out of the ordinary to help the poor.
My suspicion is that harping on poverty alleviation is a strategy by the overlords to keep the people perpetually poor. It appears as if most of those in government have no real intention of helping the poor out of their poverty; they want to keep the masses poor so that they would eternally depend on them and they can continue to manipulate them as they find fit. They have no plan to extricate them from poverty; they merely want the poor to have enough to stay alive.
So, instead of poverty alleviation, we should be talking of wealth creation. Unlike poverty alleviation, wealth creation is not a quick fix. It is a long-term project that requires proper planning and extensive investment.
I am convinced that the solution to poverty is the possession of marketable skills. It is not enough to have a skill, the skill must meet market requirements, otherwise it would be a shackle. It is when a skill is marketable that it can be used to create wealth. So, the government needs to conduct a survey of the skills that are required now and do a study of the emerging markets and equip the people with the skills that would be required by them. The trainees have to be supported while undergoing the skill acquisition process, and after the programme, so that they can eventually stand on their own and also become employers of labour.
Poverty has gradually crept into the rank of university graduates because quite a number of them do not have skills that are required by the market. This is a consequence of the universities’ reliance on curricula that were developed in the 1970s and 1980s. To save university products from the chains of lack, the institutions have to update their curricula and make them relevant to the realities of today as well as the likely demands of the future.
The problem of poverty in a country is solved by instilling in the people entrepreneurial skills; the ability to identify needs and move to meet such. That is the strength of many of the world’s thriving economies. A country that has many wealth creators among its citizens cannot be pulled down by the weight of poverty. The government should start thinking along that line.
Poverty would not be banished in the land by alleviating it. The only way to kick poverty out of Nigeria is by raising a generation of entrepreneurs who will embrace wealth creation. Until we see wealth creation as a strategy for combating poverty, many Nigerians will continue to be listed among the most wretched on the planet. That would be a shame, considering our humongous resources.
Taking a break
My beloved reader, as you are probably aware, I have been appointed the Chief Press Secretary to Oyo State Governor, His Excellency Seyi Makinde. I have already assumed duty.
I feel excited by the appointment because it offers me an opportunity to join His Excellency in his bid to give hope to the people of Oyo State while creating a great future for them. I am exhilarated that I am joining a governor whose passion for improving life and living is widely acknowledged. Given his commitment and conscientiousness, by the time he is done in 2027, Oyo State will be better by far.
But my thrill is dulled by the fact that I have to rest this column for a while. Conflict of interests will not allow me keep it while I work for the governor.
Our journey in this space started in 2011 when the then Sunday Tribune Editor, Debo Abdulai, invited me to start the column. When the current Editor, Sina Oladeinde, took over in 2012, he sustained it. I am immensely indebted to the two of them for the opportunity.
I particularly appreciate you, the readers, who kept a date with me for over a decade. Some readers of this column have become my personal friends; some never stop calling and sending messages. I thank you all.
The focus today is on rising poverty in the land. I hope that by the time I return poverty would have become significantly weakened. That, for me, will be a measure of my success in government.
O digba.
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