Poverty is neither a curse nor a choice

The challenge of poverty is really a global phenomenon. Its impact is being felt everywhere and people are hurting like never before. At a recent academic assembly in New York’s Long Island, scholars from different parts of the world came together to discuss and interact on the many challenges facing humanity, including poverty, deforestation, lack of tangible development in the so called developing countries and financial markets. They also presented their research and learning on sports, the state of justice, and such important issues. We also had the opportunity to share our ideas and propositions on the way forward regarding these challenges. Clearly, there was some consensus that an undisputed fact that ran through most of the conversation, like a line of tread, was the challenge of worsening levels of poverty across the globe, and in particular, Sub-Saharan Africa. There was also a kind of coalescence of opinion on the significant negative role and apparent complicity of governments in the mass poverty engulfing nations. In particular, the idea that substandard leadership is probably the most important cause of poverty and other ills facing humanity, is gaining prominence.
Indeed, much of the raging conflicts and the attendant dehumanization, destitution and, loss of lives and human dignity, spreading like wild fire in many parts of Africa, and elsewhere, has been traced to the poverty of leadership. Many leaders, due particularly to their very low education, poor world view, (which accounts for many of their failures, including the desire to die in office and promote tribal supremacy), lack of capacity, primordial tendencies and provincial mentality, have execrated and elevated to gruesome civil wars, what would have ordinarily been minor inter-ethnic conflicts. By taking sides with parts of their countries in oblivion of their places as national, rather tribal or ethnic champions, many leaders have flunked in their role as fathers of their nations, in preference for becoming local champions.
It is has become more incontrovertible that the leaders of this present world will have much accounting to do with their creator, on their last days. This is because they have presided over the not so honourable job of degradation of God’s favourite creation – human life. Today, about 50 per cent of the people in this world, well over three billion people, survive on less than $2.50 a day. This is a collective indictment for all those undeserving men and women in whose control God has had to place the well-being of his creation, and who spend their chances dividing and ruling them unjustly; and causing them this great pain called poverty. Much of this pain is simply man-made; the product of greed and Godlessness; just like environmental pollution, oil spillage and some aspects of desertification. The challenge for all of us, whether in political position or not, is to see to it that we contribute to the reduction of the dangerous trend of rising poverty around us. Although it has become our collective challenge, those in position of authority and particularly those in command of the common patrimony of humanity, need to reassess their roles and responsibilities that may have contributed to this scourge. Perhaps, they still may have time to make amends.
We have seen many countries where there are wars and all kinds of disputes, insurgencies and restiveness. What we need to look again is for the underlying causes of the strife. If we look closely we might find that it is the absence of good governance and justice that is at the base of all the turbulence. Look at Myanmar, a county that has stunned the whole world by the way it has continued to treat the Rohingya minorities, shortly after the “champion of peace and human rights” became their leader. She flunked more than anybody dead or alive. This is the climax of selfishness and poor leadership. Look at the Sothern Cameroon, where a man who is evidently senile and can only stand on the props of the hands of other men, is busy killing his own people because they are of different tribes and tongue. In Nigeria, the Niger Delta where oil companies are encouraged to take the oil and degrade the environment remains a classic case of exploitation. Needless to comment on the burgeoning IDP camps.
I was in some parts of the Niger Delta last weekend. I returned early enough to make the trip to New York, from where I write this piece. One was surprised that the fish, for which they used to be known was one of the most expensive food items I patronized. I was even afraid lest I consumed crude oil-rich fish. I am aware there is a plan to clean up the place. Yes there is a plan. The implementation is now a major prayer point of the people in the area.
To be poor in Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world, may be bad but it is easily understandable. The country in its entirety is poor. You are poor. Your neighbour is poor. Your representative in government is poor. Your country has little financial capacity for anything. In fact you heard that your country owes many others because it is poor. So there is reason to avoid self-deprecation and self-blame. You understand what is doing you, as they say in local Nigerian lingo. The country is poor. Period. To be poor in Nigeria may also not be completely hard to understand. Many things can visit poverty on a man. However, to be abjectly poor in Nigeria is not only hard to understand but a communal disgrace. It can no longer be traced to the poor that we are collectively unable to let go some minor parts of the collective patrimony we cornered, mostly through public office, to minimize their poverty. I call it the people’s collective patrimony because all the billion we make in Nigeria come from the exploitation of natural resources, particularly oil. There are no inventors here and nobody is working any patent of which I know.
Over the past several years, Nigeria has achieved one of the highest economic growth rates. The average in some decades was as high as 7.4 per cent, according to a report released by the World Bank sometime in 2014. Yet about 100 of the 186 million citizens live below the poverty line. And the reality could be worse than this. How on earth can we hope to have a country, in the not so distant future, when the bulk of our folks are so poor they can’t feed? As the World Poverty Clock indicates, Nigeria’s uncontrolled and rising population will face starvation as insecurity expands and food production retards. The poverty we face today is not a curse, contrary to the ideas being sold in some ignorant circles. It is also not a choice we made because, as I said in 2005 in my book, Microfinance and Economic Activity, there is no award for poverty. Above all, we do not have a social security system that protects those who opt to be jobless and poor. It is all a creation of men. We should all examine our roles in this debacle and be sure we have no blood in our hands.

Emeka Osuji