The World Bank recently presented a rather cursory report on Nigeria’s worsening poverty. That is a dangerous move that could send the rulers of the land into nauseating revelry.
The bank said that poverty in Nigeria would rise from the 40 per cent mark in 2021 to 42.5 in 2022. In all, the bank expects Nigeria’s population of the poor to rise by five million to 95.1 million in 2022.
The bank’s report strangely blamed COVID-19 and population growth for the raging poverty in Nigeria. Conversely, the African Development Bank (AfDB) has a more grisly picture of the poverty rate in Nigeria.
AfDB believes that poverty has become a normal situation in Nigeria.
Months after Nigeria snatched the inglorious toga of the world’s headquarters of poverty from India in 2018, AfDB estimated the poverty rate in Nigeria at 80 per cent. With a population of 207 million at that time, it was obvious that about 122 million Nigerians were poor.
That sounds more realistic than the World Bank recent report. The poverty rate has not declined since the fight against poverty stalled in 2015.
The poverty rampage in Nigeria goes beyond the menace of COVID-19 and population growth. It is the product of endemic corruption and a selfish income distribution system that allocates the largest chunk of the nation’s resources to those who do not need it, while ruthlessly depriving those in desperate need of it.
Architects of Nigeria’s income distribution system take the blame for keeping 122 million people in penury.
Nigeria’s pension scheme is a sad reminder of the skewed income distribution system crying helplessly for reforms.
BBC television put Nigeria’s pension arrears at N400 billion as at the end of 2019. If that sum is ploughed into the economy by paying pensioners, millions would be lifted out of poverty.
Some state economies are creaking under the crushing weight of seven years pension arrears. Zamfara state government inherited pension arrears of N10 billion.
The irony of the pension debt is that the governors who ruled the respective states for four or eight years at most, always go home with severance packages that could settle the pension arrears of thousands of retired workers pushed into penury by pension debts.
Last year human rights activists stormed Enugu state House of Assembly to halt deliberations on a bill that would give the governor a retirement package worth billions of naira. The bill was riddled with absurd provisions as “condolence allowances” for relatives of a dead ex-governor. That is a state that is heavily indebted to thousands of pensioners.
Weeks before leaving office, Abdulazeez Yari, the immediate past governor of Zamfara state signed into law, a bill that allocated to him billions of naira in pension entitlements including an incongruous provision for a monthly stipend of N10 million in the name of a curious overhead cost.
Lagos remains the richest state in Nigeria. It earns a minimum of N32 billion monthly in internally generated revenue (IGR). Ironically Lagos is one of the big pension debtors in Nigeria. It takes a minimum of three years for a retiree to be listed in the state pension pay roll.
Worst still, the state government has curiously suspended the payment of gratuity to its retirees. What they get on retirement is a percentage of their savings in the contributory pension scheme, which in the case of a level 15 officer is just about N2 million. Gratuity for officers at that level is a minimum of N10 million. The state government has commandeered that. Conversely, retiring governors who served one or two terms are still paid gratuities in nine digits.
The irony of the governors’ bumper pension harvest is that they do not need the money allocated to them. In Nigeria, a very honest governor who does not loot the treasury would have made billions by awarding juicy contracts to firms fronting for him.
When the governor retires, he has billions of naira waiting for him. The greedy ones among them steal billions while in office.
Even with all that, they still extort the states through dubious pension laws.
The other reason for Nigeria’s grisly state of poverty is the lewd opulent life style of government officials. Sight of the convoy of a police AIG made me wonder why a country that spends 93 per cent of its annual income on debt service would indulge a level 15 officer with vehicles in the range of N70 million.
The AIG’s Lexus jeep is about N40 million. He is escorted by about 10 policemen in two pick-ups with street value of N15 million each. That is in a country where 300,000 policemen secure 207 million people.
Police commissioners get something close to that. DIGs and the IG himself have even more superfluous convoys. That too is what each of the 43 ministers get.
A Nigerian senator earns N29,479,749 ($51,269 at current official rate) monthly. His counterpart in the U.S. earns $14,500 (N8, 337, 500). Nigeria is a heavily indebted country living bigger than a lender nation.
Ironically the World Bank report was curiously silent on the brewing economic storm that would push millions more below poverty line. Diesel now sells for N700 per liter. Nigeria imports all the refined petroleum products it consumes.
Operators of BRT buses in Lagos have not got permission to increase fares. They responded to the hike in diesel pump price by turning off the air conditions in the buses. Commuters now sweat in what used to be air conditioned luxury buses.
Those in long distance haulage of food items do not have the patience of the BRT operators. They have already passed the cost of diesel to food traders who in turn pass it to consumers. Power supply has dropped to five hours per day even as diesel price surges.
The sum total is that inflation is heading back to the 20 per cent mark and would price many out of the food items market. Millions more will join the 122 million below poverty line.
On a frenzied day last week, the naira plummeted to N600 to the dollar in the parallel market.
The price of imported wheat, a key ingredient in bread baking has surged with that depreciation. Bakers have placed consumers on notice that price of a standard loaf will soon cross the N600 mark. That obviously will be out of the reach of the poor. It was N350 in 2017.
The gospel truth in the World Bank report is that Nigeria’s fight against poverty stalled since 2015. Everyone expects millions more to join the inglorious club where suffering reigns supreme.
