A new report released on Wednesday by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington DC has raised new debate on poverty in Nigeria. The report, which said that Nigeria currently contributes heavily to global poverty numbers, added that the country could contribute another 61.5 million poor people to the global total by 2030. It said, Nigeria needed to grow her economy from 2.3 to 3.2 per cent in real term.
The report which detailed the World Bank Group’s (WBG) twin goals of ending extreme poverty by 2030 and promoting shared prosperity lamented the gap in living standards between those in the bottom 40 and the top 60 per cent of the population around the world, noting the need to promote shared prosperity, measured as income growth of the bottom 40 per cent.
In fact, President of the World Bank Group, Jim Yong Kim noted that although the world had made some progress in reducing poverty, the economic gap between the rich and the poor was still very wide.
He said: “The world has made great progress in the last quarter-century in reducing extreme poverty – it was cut by a stunning two-thirds, and now we have the opportunity to end poverty in less than a generation.
“But we will not finish the job unless we find ways to reduce inequality, which stubbornly persists all over the world. This vision of a more equal world means we must find ways to spread wealth to the billions who have almost nothing.”
The new World Bank report on ending extreme poverty by 2030 has raised fresh debate regarding Nigeria’s status as the largest economy in Africa. Specifically, it raises questions on why the country’s growing economy has not touched the lives of the citizenry who are getting poorer.
Nigeria happens to be a country with vast economic potentials that could have made it an economic power, but which is regrettably still struggling for economic relevance, even as majority of the citizenry still live below poverty level.
In April this year, the Minister of Finance and coordinating Minister of the Economy, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala released a rebased gross domestic product (GDP) figures for the country which indicated that Nigeria’s GDP grew by $149.3 billion or 41.4 per cent (N26.018 trillion or 48 per cent) between 2010 and 2013. Nigeria’s economy grew from N54.204 trillion (about $360.6 billion) in 2010 to N63.258 trillion ($408.8 billion) the following year; and N71.186 trillion ($449.9 billion) in 2012 and stood at $509.9 billion (N80.222 trillion) at the end of 2013, making Nigeria the largest economy in Africa after beating South Africa with an economy that stood at $370.3 billion to the second position.
However, the figures had generated some controversy after the World Bank, within the same period of the government releasing the rebased GDP, issued a report that listed Nigeria among the five poorest countries in the world.
The Federal Government had disagreed with the World Bank rating with President Goodluck Jonathan insisting that “the nation is not poor.” He had argued at the May Day rally on May 1 that “the challenge of the country is not poverty, but redistribution of wealth.”
Indeed, analysts agree that Nigeria is not a poor country. They say Nigeria is a rich country with poor citizens because the resources that would have provided for the citizenry have been hijacked by a few people.
They argue that the problem with Nigeria has always been that whenever the government talked about poverty alleviation, they end up further enriching the rich.
Debo Adeniran, Executive Chairman of Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders (CACOL) agrees that Nigeria as a country is not poor but that state policies have rendered majority of the citizenry poor.
He said: “Really, nobody is saying that the country is poor because we do not have problem with poverty going by the abundance of natural and human resources we are endowed with. However, it is sad to note that we have a rich country with a preponderance of poor citizenry. Almost 80% of us live below poverty line while less than 1% of us live in obscene affluence keeping more than 90% of the nation’s wealth for themselves. Those that are productively engaged are not up to 10% of the workforce i.e. those whose employment could feed. More than 80% of working Nigerians do not have enough income from their work to meet their socio-economic obligations while majority are either engaged in menial labour or have nothing to do at all.”
He accused the government of mismanaging the country’s resources that could have bettered the lot of the average Nigerians.
He concluded: “Now that the President knows that the wealth of the nation is concentrated in the hands of a few, the next thing should be how do we redistribute the wealth? The government should come up with policy that will take the wealth from the super rich and distribute it to the very poor
Originally published by the Daily Independent (Daily Independent)