EASING THE BURDEN OF THE POOR

INTRODUCTION

I feel honoured to be invited to give this speech as the Guest Speaker at the 2007 District Conference of the Rotary International District 9110 Nigeria being held in Abeokuta. The theme of the Conference is: “Leading the Way in the New Century”. The topic of my speech is naturally expected to be woven around the conference theme.

Obviously, there are many areas of human endeavour in which an individual or a society can lead the way in the new century. The theme is pleasantly elastic and lends itself to easy manipulation and affords the speaker a lot of room to manoeuvre. However, because nothing threatens the survival of any society more than poverty, perhaps next to corruption, I have chosen the topic: ‘Easing the Burden of the Poor’ for this speech.  At the bottom of the tasks involved in this topic is service to humanity.

ROTARY AND THE TOPIC

‘Service’ accords with the best practices of Rotarians wherever they are. The projects they execute in society are oftentimes aimed at making life better for citizens in their environment, elitist though they themselves are in background, thinking, bearing and organization. One is not too surprised because service permeates the entire Rotary set up. Let me repeat what my Rotarian friends in this audience already know but inform our non-Rotarian guests present here of Rotarians’ attitudes to service. Take the following in the Rotary organization:

ROTARY PRAYERS:
O Lord and giver of all good, we praise thee for our daily food.
May Rotary friends and Rotary ways
Help us to serve thee all our days.

OBJECT OF ROTARY

The object of Rotary is to encourage and foster the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise and, in particular, to encourage and foster,

First

1. The development of acquaintances as an opportunity for service.

Second 

1. High ethical standards in business and professions; the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations and the dignifying by each Rotarian’s occupation as an opportunity to serve society.

Third

1. The application of the ideal of service by every Rotarian’s personal, business, and community life.

Fourth

1. The advancement of international understanding; goodwill and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service.

(The emphasis on serve or service is mine for effect).
One service which we must render to the Nigerian society is to try and ease the burden of the poor in our own collective interest and our own collective survival and security.   Rotarians are already rendering it in their own little way; it is not enough, they must do more.

THE BURDEN OF THE POOR

The poor, in most countries, form the biggest group of citizens. They have the least economic power.  They are in the lowest step of the social ladder. They look up to wealthy citizens to give them handouts. They also wait for government to organize their lives for them in such a way that life is meaningful to them. Life is meaningful when they have access to basic needs of man: food, shelter and clothing.  The poor do not necessarily want these essentials without sweat, that is free, or on a platter of gold.  Rather, they want a mechanism that empowers them to access the essentials on their own.  One of the components of such mechanism is education or training or some skill-providing scheme. 

The second and equally important component of the mechanism is employment – landing themselves a job.  Employment naturally possesses the potential of making one actualize oneself i.e. utilize the skills acquired through education to benefit oneself on the one hand and benefit the larger society on the other hand. In recent times, most poor citizens have not been lucky to be so educated or be so employed.  They are therefore not in a position to provide their food, shelter or clothing.  They go about their lives perpetually dependent on others for these basic needs of life. They live with this heavy burden of humiliation, a kind of economic disenfranchisement. Many developed societies are conscious of the negative behaviours which this situation may trigger off; consequently, they carve out resources from the country’s treasury to institute the regime of social security.  Have we thought about this way of easing the burden of the poor in our midst?  What is government worth if it will not go out of its way to ease the burden of its citizens?

It is hardly realized that poverty and ignorance often go together.  When one is poor, he is incapable of going to school, especially in a country where schools are a business venture, not accessible institutions for social service.  In that kind of circumstance, the individual misses the chance of being introduced to many things that may be of benefit to him, his children, and his children’s children. These things which he may not be exposed to may include health and security as well as social interactions.  The gap resulting from this lack of exposure may even lead to termination of life at an early age or permanent disability.  This is yet another burden that the poor often carry in our society.

The twin tragedy of poverty and ignorance assumes greater dimension in a section of the country where the so-called ‘almajiri system’ is prevalent. What is almajiri system? The system is associated with Islamic education, precisely the Quranic school where pupils are taught about Islam and how to read the Quran. 

The teachers in these schools, known as Mallams, are itinerant teachers who depend on charity for their livelihood. They survive on gifts (in cash or in kind) given ‘feesabilillahi (in the way of Allah or for the sake of God).  They also take care of the children put in their care from the charity received.  Most of the time, the children in their care are from distant places. In the event of insufficiency, they send out their pupils for the same purpose: solicit for charity for survival from door to door, place to place.  This practice reduces the teachers and pupils to beggars. These days, it is the pupils that are found on the streets in droves begging for sadaqah (alms). These child- beggars, these pupils (many of whom may have nothing to do with any Mallam or any Quranic school) are called ‘almajiri’ (singular) or almajirai (plural) in Hausa. The word originated from the Arabic word ‘al-muhaajir’ (emigrant) and the plural ‘al-muhaajiruun’ (emigrants i.e. those who left their homes in search of knowledge) (El-Yakub, 2005:86-89; Fafunwa, 1974:54-55). Originally, al-muhaajiruun’ referred to those who left Mecca for Medina with the Prophet in search of religious freedom (Q, 59:8-9).

The point being made about the almajiri or almajirai is that their continued existence is a big sore on the social fabric of Nigeria which neither the Federal Government nor the State Governments of Northern Nigeria have done little or nothing about for years.  These are an army of youngsters found roaming the streets in their millions with bowls in their hands from morning to night begging for alms instead of being in school – Quranic school (with limited, narrow 14th century curriculum) nor the western-type school (with all-embracing, modern curriculum). These unfortunate young Nigerians are a pitiable, sorry sight – usually very dirty, totally unkempt and in tattered clothes, emitting foul odour while moving in “packs”.  They are a handy platoon for hire by unscrupulous barons of destabilization in times of orchestrated religious or political crises to perpetuate violence. These poor Nigerians must be rescued.  Enrolling in the Quranic school with the limited curriculum from which they even drop out to engage in begging out of poverty and ignorance is a big drawback on the economy of the nation.  I have deliberately avoided the word cultural because there is nothing in Islamic culture that links begging with seeking knowledge.  Purely at the base of this practice are poverty and ignorance. If it is seen as Hausa culture, it is indeed an ignoble one which must be done away with fast – in the interest of the future of the children, their parents and the nation.

CONSEQUENCES OF THE BURDEN OF THE POOR

The consequences of the burden are legion, but we shall focus on three for brevity.

Poverty is generally associated with lack of education or even levels of education. This is not surprising because education is associated with upward social mobility. That is, the higher the education, the greater the chances of employment; the more regular the employment, the greater the chances of moving into higher social classes,  other things being equal. Where one is poor and unable to have access to education, one risks many things, including remaining poor and in low social class on the average.

First, take infant and child mortality rate, for an example.  A World Bank Study found that levels of infant and child mortality are strongly related to the education of mothers in Nigeria. The under-5 mortality rate is reduced by 35/1000 for primary schooled mothers and by a further 26/1000 for those with secondary schooling. For mothers with  no education, the child mortality rate is higher than that of infant mortality rate (Africa Region Human Development III, 2004:21).  See table 1 below.
Table 1: Levels of Infant and Child Mortality by Mothers’ Education (per 1000 live births)

	Infant	Child	Under-5 Mortality
No Education Primary Secondary Higher	76.9 71.2 59.0 40.5	86.6 54.5 39.3 13.0	156.8 121.8 95.9 53.0

Source:  National Population Commission, 2000.

This translates to the higher the education, the lower the infant and   child mortality rate.

Second, levels of malnutrition are linked with mothers’ education as well.  The table below indicates this for children whose weight-for-age is two and three times below the median and for those whose mothers have a primary schooling. (Africa Region Human Development III, 2004:21).

Table 2: Weight-for-Age Measures of Child Nutritional Status by Mothers’ Education (per cent)

	Below 3 SD	Below 2 SD
No Education Primary Secondary	17.8 6.8 5.8	36.3 23.9 19.5

SD = standard deviation
Source: National Population Commission 2000

From the above table, it can be seen that the higher the education, the higher the nutritional status of the children, and the more information the mother has on health seeking behaviour and outcomes. It is common knowledge that good nutritional well-being affects a child’s performance in school as well as its physical and mental capacity in later life.

Third, as a result of excruciating poverty which has seized the nation, arising mainly from lack of access to employment, whatever the level of education, we have on our hands idle youths, who have become the devil’s workshop. They are angry, devastated, vicious and determined to make an impression on a society they perceive as unfeeling, uncaring, heartless and callous.  They have become a veritable threat to the security of lives and property.  Nobody sleeps any more with their two eyes closed. Armed robberies, assassinations, violent attacks, and kidnappings are on the increase.  The frequency, the regularity and the bestiality with which they carry out the attacks on innocent citizens give the impression that government may have given up on them.

STATUS OF POVERTY IN NIGERIA

Nigeria is regarded as the sixth largest oil producer in the world. By any standard, it is believed that she is a rich country, moreso when it is also blessed with agricultural resources as well as abundant solid mineral resources. However, from the way her economy has been managed since independence in 1960, she is far from being considered rich.  In fact, she is considered a champion among the poorest countries of the world.  By UNDP estimates, 60% of the population live below the poverty line and 50% of the employable adults are currently unemployed or underemployed according to the Federal Office of Statistics (FOS) (Ijiomah, 2002:155). The Economist of London has corroborated this by its recent estimate that about 70% of Nigeria’s population still lives on the equivalent of one dollar ($1.00) a day or less while unemployment in the rural areas could be as high as 60% (Punch, 2007:15).

The further we move away from independence, the poorer the nation becomes. Indeed economic indices suggest that the average Nigerian was better off in 1964 than he is today in 2007, 43 years later. (Ijiomah, 2002:158)

A World Bank study, namely, Africa Region Human Development III (2004:19-20) quoting a Federal Office of Statistics (1999) figure states that in 1980, 28% of the Nigerian population lived in poverty compared with almost 66% in 1996. There is no reason to believe that anything has changed for the better in 2007 when the hues and cries about   poverty becoming more biting are louder than before. The signs of increasing poverty expressed in various frenzied and illegal actions by even the security agents are all over the place.

At least in 1964 we did not really have dare-devil, over bold policemen shooting commercial vehicle drivers to death for failing or being too slow to give them twenty naira |(N20.00) bribe for plying the highway.  In a small town, Agbara near Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education, between Agbara Bus-stop and Federal Government College, Ijanikin Bus stop, a distance of less than two kilometers, there are about eight ‘stop and search security posts’ manned by about eighty police men and customs officers (ostensibly to catch smugglers on the Express Way). The posts are toll points rather than security posts.  At each point, money is extorted at gunpoint from the drivers.

Naturally, the drivers pass the ‘levies’ being extorted to passengers through the fares which the latter pay throughout the country. It makes business sense, doesn’t it?  But it increases, the transportation cost for the poor with the government looking the other way, feigning ignorance!

The annual United Nations Human Development Index Report (HDI) reveals that (a) the quality of life of most Nigerians is poor and substandard; (b) Nigeria was ranked 158th out of 177 countries surveyed in 2005 using the criteria of access to potable water, electricity, health care facilities, school environment and housing; (c) life expectancy for 2005 was estimated at 43.4 years only. 

Another Agency, Human Poverty Index (HPI) scored Nigeria 38.8% to place 75th.  For 2006, Nigeria was reported not to have featured in the list of Most Liveable countries but to have even ranked 19th in the Least Liveable countries, with countries like Niger Republic, Sierra-Leone, Mali, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Kabila’s Congo, Rwanda, Eritrea and Gambia being adjudged more liveable than Nigeria! (Punch, 2007:15). This explains why Nigerians in hundreds spend fortunes and are ready to put up with degrading and humiliating treatments to obtain American Lottery and bid bye-bye to their country. That is escapist and defeatist, but does anybody blame them?

WAY FORWARD

The way forward is to embark on conscious, serious and practical efforts to eradicate poverty, not the politically-motivated, futile measures of the so-called Poverty Alleviation Programme which has gulped millions of naira with nothing to show for it.  

In between the two views of Obanya (2004) and Ijiomah (2002) quoted hereunder lie most of the solutions required for quitting the poverty club.    Obanya (2004:2) states:

Poverty eradication does not mean distributing government money freely to those who are considered poor, and who may not necessarily be part of the most deprived group in the country. Instead, it should mean:

1. Raising the levels of awareness, knowledge and skills among the people.
2. Providing an enabling environment for people to use their skills and knowledge to generate reasonable income for themselves and to improve their living standards.
3. Creating employment opportunities.
4. Making basic services (education, health, food and nutrition, maternal and child care, housing, transportation, etc.) affordable to the ordinary citizen.
5. Directing government spending to areas that are likely to have positive multiplier effects on the economy and on the lives off the people.

Ijiomah (2002:159) states as well:

In the short-term it is obvious that the base for such transformation does not yet exist   but would in any case depend on:

1. improving the state of infrastructure and utilities:  power, telecommunication and roads
2. availability and affordability of petroleum products as the preferred source of energy;
3. enhancement of capacity utilization in manufacturing industries with general expansion of productivity of the non-oil sector;
4. arresting and reversing the worsening poverty and unemployment situation through increased productivity;
5. restructuring the economy to make it market oriented, private sector-led and technology driven.

All of the above, if implemented, will ease the burden of the poor.  Since independence, various governments have in truth been striving to achieve them.  However, insincerity in implementation, due to selfishness of many past leaders, can be said to be the stumbling block. Corruption, to be precise, appears to be responsible for non- implementation. Of course, corruption is generally believed to be being tackled frontally by this Administration. Whether the fight against corruption is being won depends on which side of the fence one is standing.  At least the corrupt do not seem to feel free or exhibit nonchalance as we used to know in committing their heinous crimes against the people, especially the poor against whom its negative effects are heavily skewed.  They are apparently afraid of being arrested. 

Perhaps, the constitution should be amended to come to the aid of the poor. That is, all the recommendations above, which in effect constitute the political, social and economic responsibilities of government, should be made justiciable.   They should become issues over which citizens could go to court to hold   government accountable for their non provision.  All our Holy Books are in support of this. At least I know that God said that he sent to the world through His messengers, the Book, the Balance and the Iron (Q. 57:25). The Book is the Scripture which enjoins good and forbids evil, the Balance is Justice which is responsible for giving   each person his due and Iron which is the Law/Discipline/Sanction to be applied on evil-doers.

From the amount of thieving being exposed right, left and centre, running into trillions of dollars since independence, I am convinced that this country is rich enough to provide all that are necessary to alleviate poverty and advance to the status of ‘medium powers’ which Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and China have become in the last thirty years or so.  These are countries that were at par with Nigeria at independence in the level of educational, political, social, agricultural, economic or industrial development etc.

I am even emboldened to assert that Nigeria can finance free education at all levels if our gargantuan human and material    resources are properly and humanely harnessed! If we will not do that, let all educational institutions be very well funded so that quality   education is dispensed to all Nigerian children irrespective of the social class to which their parents belong. If we cannot educate   everybody free (and honestly, I do not see why not), we should get back to the scholarship scheme of old when merit and only merit was the yardstick for giving scholarships. I believe the children of the poor and their parents would feel satisfied.

The  ‘Almajiri system’ is a blight on our collective integrity as affirmed earlier. It has continued because poverty and ignorance are at its base and because of non-challance of government towards eradicating it.  All governments should develop the will to eradicate it, move the unfortunate children by force if need be out of the streets and into the schools and utilize the advantage of the current UBE to compel them to be in the school. It should be a case of the carrot and the stick. Government should go the extra mile of not only providing for all the needs of the children – food, clothes, shelter etc. -  but find a way of enticing the so-called Mallams and the children’s parents/guardians through inducements of jobs, handouts, gifts etc so they can let go and encourage their wards to go to school. 

After all, there are stories of such inducements in Southern Nigeria when farming parents would rather keep their children working for them than allow them to go to the white man’s school at the beginning of Western schooling in the 19th century.  Doing that conscientiously may run into billions of naira, but it is very much worth it.  The overall benefit to the nation is unquantifiable. The thieving elite has the field day cornering national resources in various ways because only a pittance is spent on the downtrodden, the scum of the earth.

Money spent on ensuring food security in the nation is, for me, money well spent.  People are hungry. Direct assistance to farmers in terms of agricultural loans, cheap hiring of equipment for mechanized farming, allocation of large tracks of land mainly for farming, much more highly subsidized fertilizers reaching the farmers directly without intermediaries are some of the measures to be taken to ensure that we guarantee cheap food in the land.  The secret of food being cheap in the 50s and early 60s lay not only in the patriotic operation of the defunct Marketing Boards and Farmers’ Cooperative Units or Guilds, but also in ensuring that the value of foodstuffs produced for local consumption greatly exceeded the production of crops for export. For an example, the estimate of the locally consumed foodstuffs was ₤342.6 million while the value for export crops was ₤84.4 million in 1956-57 (Ekundare, 1971:299-280). If we must ease the burden of the poor, we must utilize all the tricks in the book to provide cheap affordable food.

Moreover, it is as if all the research institutes all over the country are in abeyance. Government must do everything possible to revive them and make them join in the fight against food insecurity, against hunger ravaging the land.  A few of the old agricultural Research Institutes which must be resuscitated include the West African Institute for Oil Palm, Benin; Cocoa Research Institute Sub Station, Ibadan; West African Maize Rust Research Unit, Ibadan; the Central Research Organisation, Ibadan; Northern Regional Stock Farm, Shika, Zaria and Research Station at Samaru, Zaria. (Ekundare, 1971:285-286).  We must create new research institutes to meet the needs of an expanding population in terms of food sufficiency for both local consumption and export.  A situation in which the zeal to export is not balanced with adequate amount needed for local consumption, thereby creating scarcity of food for local consumption and bringing about sky-rocketing prices of even staple food is not acceptable and must be reversed. Because the burden is more on the poor (the hewers of wood and carriers of water) than on the rich and not-so-poor elite, there must be a clear, unmistakable return to ‘price support subsidies’ policy for food and other commodities that affect the poor.  After all, we claim to subsidize the pump price of petroleum products, why not food, transportation, health, etc to the same degree as we do for petroleum?

Money expended on easing the burden of the poor, however big, is money well spent.  It is money that may keep at bay the prayers of many poor Nigerians for the appearance of a ‘Rawlings’ to clear the Augean stables. May the gathering storm, may the approaching cataclysm, may Armageddon before the Final Hour not descend in our life time. For this last prayer not to be answered, we need the ‘service’ obsession of Rotary to rule our lives as a people, that is serve the poor, serve the nation with all our heart.

In conclusion, I dare say with confidence that leading the way in this new century will not be a problem if we as a nation come down from our Olympian heights and sincerely subject every action or intent of ours to the popular 4-Way Test of the Rotary:

1. Is it the TRUTH?
2. Is it FAIR to all concerned?
3. Will it build GOODWILL and better FRIENDSHIP?
4. Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

Mr. President, Great Rotarians, Eminent Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for inviting me to give this speech and thank you for listening.