Eradication of NAPEP, triumph of poverty

Eradication of NAPEP, triumph of poverty

By Clem Oluwole

(First published in January 22, 2015).

The Federal Government recently wrote the dirge of the National Poverty Eradication Programme or NAPEP. The initiative was the government’s direct response to the grinding poverty that has been plaguing the proverbial common man in the country for a zillion years now. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration threw NAPEP into the steel cage for the epic (wrestling) battle against the monstrosity coached by a super monster known as corruption.

For a little over one decade, NAPEP fought poverty hammer and tongs until the Jonathan administration threw in the towel not long ago. Poverty is triumphing because successive governments have failed to sack the monster’s chief coach. Corruption is the invidious crime that impoverishes the masses. Tame corruption and poverty would lose out automatically. Obasanjo’s NAPEP was hurled into the ring in 2001 or thereabouts.

However, the incidence of poverty worsened between 2004 and 2010, according to the statistics made available by the National Bureau of Statistics or NBS. The report indicated that the number of Nigerians living below poverty line rose from 68.7m to 112.5m (about 63.7 per cent), while the population rose from 139.2m to 158.6m (13.9 per cent rise in population over the same period.)

Unemployment also bears the watering can that nurtures poverty. The monster grew from 12.3 per cent in 2006 to 23.9 per cent in 2011. During this period, the Nigerian economy grew strongly at an average of 6.6 per cent, making the country the 5th fastest growing economy in the world. Today, Nigeria is the leading economy in Africa and rated 26th in the world. By the year 2020, the country envisions to be among the top 20 in the world… about five years away from now. The above rating represents the paradox of growth in the face of inequality and mass poverty bedevilling the country.

According to the World Bank rankings, Nigeria is one of the top five countries that have the largest number of poor people. India ranks number one with 33 per cent of the world’s poor. China is ranked second with 13 per cent of the world’s poor, followed by Nigeria where 7 per cent of the world’s poor live. Bangladesh has 6 per cent, while the Democratic Republic of Congo has 5 per cent of the world’s poor population. The Big 5 are home to 760 million of the world’s poor folks.



Before the elegy for NAPEP, let me emphasise at this point that the widespread poverty is an offshoot of corruption that mops up resources that could have been used for development. And at the rate we are going, we don’t need a Nostradamus to tell us that the Vision 20:2020 mantra would end up as a mirage so long as our leaders continue to pillage the commonweal. Poverty, as innocuous as it looks, elicits hunger. And a hungry man is an angry man, so says an axiom. The day millions of Nigerians, impoverished by the unjust system, decide to vent their frustrations on their oppressors, the accompanying social upheavals could finally consume Nigeria. And there will be no hiding place for the rich and the powerful.

One sad thing I will forever remember NAPEP for is the September 2001 upheavals that ravaged Jos and its environs. The moments that followed the establishment of the seemingly laudable programme, were its replication at the state and local government levels. The choice of the man who was picked as the coordinator for the Jos North Local Government Area of Plateau state did not go down well with the indigenes of the locality. They could not imagine placing the sensitive position of alleviating poverty in the hands of a non-son of the soil from the neighbouring Bauchi state though born and bred in the community. Nonetheless, he was perceived as a stranger. Security reports sniffed trouble. But the state governor who made the choice refused to change his mind. The indigenes, who saw NAPEP as the tool of liberation from poverty, took up arms against the non-indigene coordinator.

The battle was polarised along religious fault lines. It was a horrifying chapter in the annals of the Home of Peace and Tourism. The socio-economic life of the Tin City was brought to its knees, culminating in the total destruction of the Jos Ultra-modern Market, the best in West Africa and a pride of the city. The upheavals soon spread to other parts of the state and the battle was bitterly fought as though the combatants had sworn to an oath of self-annihilation. Although the NAPEP-induced crises that dragged for many years have simmered down, things are no longer the same. So, for Plateau state, NAPEP did not come to alleviate poverty; it came to aggravate it. Ask those who suffered terrible economic losses during the crises. Many victims of the madness have been ruined for life.

While NAPEP was still gasping under the barrage of blows from the reigning champion (poverty), the Jonathan administration threw SURE-P or Subsidy Reinvestment Programme, a more energised challenger, into the fray in 2012. But with the head coach, corruption, still at the ringside, surely, SURE-P would go the way of NAPEP.