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Theresa May on poverty in Nigeria

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Theresa May
Theresa May

AHEAD of her visit to Nigeria on Wednesday, Mrs. Theresa May, British Prime Minister, said that Nigeria is home to the highest number of “very poor people” in the world. Speaking in Cape Town, South Africa, on Tuesday, Mrs. Theresa May mentioned the rather well-known fact that Africa is home to a majority of the world’s fragile states and a quarter of the world’s displaced people. “Much of Nigeria is thriving, with many individuals enjoying the fruits of a resurgent economy, yet 87 million Nigerians live below $1 and 90 cents a day, making it home to more very poor people than any other nation in the world,” she said.

 

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It will be recalled that in June, the Brookings Institution named Nigeria the poverty capital of the world. To achieve that inglorious record, the country overtook India, a country with a population of over 1.3 billion people. Sadly, in its reaction to the report, the Federal Government adopted a rather cavalier and unreflective position, urging Nigerians to dismiss it on the ground that it was compiled when the country was in the throes of what it called the worst economic recession in 29 years. That the government could promote this piece of sophistry in the face of the rampant suffering in the land was shocking, but what was even more confounding was that it had not shown any readiness to lift the people, through viable policies and programmes of action, out of the morass of poverty and the debilitating conditions in which they have remained trapped for quite some time.

Against the backdrop of the Brookings Institution’s report and Prime Minister May’s lamentation, it is time for the government to take a hard look at its policies and programmes.While, as pointed out by the prime minister, achieving inclusive growth is a challenge across the world, the fact that Africa needs to create 50,000 new jobs per day to keep employment rate at its current level till 2035 should provide food for thought. This is because rather than creating jobs, the government has had to contend with incessant job losses. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, between January and September 2017, 4.07 million Nigerians became unemployed. The number of Nigerians that became unemployed rose from 11.92 million in the first quarter of the year to 13.58 million and 15.99 million in the second and third quarters respectively.

Indeed, between the second quarter and third quarter, the number of economically active or working age population (15 – 64 years of age) increased from 110.3 million to 111.1 million. According to the NBS report, the increasing unemployment and underemployment rates meant that the domestic labour market was still fragile and economic growth had not been strong enough to provide employment, even though the economy was officially out of recession. The 2018 figures are no better as, only this week, the NBS indicated that the economy remains fragile as GDP growth slowed down in the second quarter of this year. The economy grew 1.5 per cent in the quarter, a downturn from the 1.95 per cent growth recorded in the first quarter, yet population growth continues at 2.5 per cent.

The import of the foregoing statistics is that poverty is on the rise in the country and urgent measures need to be rolled out to stem the tide. In doing this, it is important to realise that Nigeria’s redemption has to come from within. Thus, while we do not begrudge Prime Minister Theresa May her ambition to make the United Kingdom the biggest G-7 investor in Africa by 2022, “building around shared prosperity and shared security,” we believe that Nigerians can only escape from poverty when governments at all levels eliminate waste, tap into the country’s abundant human and natural resources, and curb corruption. In this enterprise, efforts would have to make the states centres of development instead of the current practice. This means that the country has no option but to embrace the restructuring imperative.

In our previous editorials, we pointed out that the goal of the government given the continuing increase in the unemployment rate should be to improve the real and productive sectors of the economy which are the engines that could provide engagement and employment for the teeming population of Nigerians out of productive engagement, rather than just offering paltry employment opportunities to about 200,000 Nigerians. Productivity, we warned, should be about improving the economic conditions that would make it possible for Nigerians to establish businesses and for the country to attract foreign investors who would also set up enterprises that would offer massive employment. In this regard, the fundamental shortages in infrastructure within the economy, especially the problem of power, need to be addressed, while the environment for doing business in the country should be made less tedious. After all, according to Mrs. Theresa May, “it is in the world’s interest to see that jobs are created, to tackle the causes and symptoms of extremism and instability, to deal with migration flows and to encourage clean growth.” This is both desirable and achievable.

The post Theresa May on poverty in Nigeria appeared first on Tribune.

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