By Emeka Alex Duru
(08054103327)
Those that describe man as a product of his environment, may not be entirely wrong. Situations, in most cases, bring out the best and worst in us. When some public-spirited groups and individuals stretch themselves to reach out to the less privileged or the most vulnerable in the society in times of crisis, they may not be giving out of abundance. They are responding to their conscience. On the other hand, there are those who see every uncertain situation as an opportunity to manifest the beast in them. They are vampires feeding on the inadequacies of the time and miseries of their fellow men and women. Moments of crisis, are for them, time to unleash their latent greedy tendencies on the society. It is for such people that government exists, as an institution, to check their excesses. Unfortunately, in our system, the government has not been able to arrest the trend. Even the government and its officials are not entirely free of this charge.
Perhaps, we may take some instances, to buttress the point. At the height of the 1967 – 1970 Civil War, the Biafran economy was in shambles on account of the economic blockade placed on the region by the federal government in cahoots with its foreign collaborators. The immediate impact of the blockade was scarcity of essential goods and the ravaging hunger that resulted to various ailments, chiefly, the Kwashiokor, especially among the children. Moved by the plight of the gaunt and frail-looking kids with distended stomachs and swollen feet, concerned humanitarian organisations and individuals in other parts of the world, extended donations to Biafra to stem the death rates among the citizens. But that created opportunity for rogue elements in Biafra to live big while their compatriots starved to death. Thus, the essence of the aid was lost to many.
Officials of successive Nigerian government are still in the practice. Sometime in the recent past, Dates donated by Saudi Arabia, to vulnerable Muslims during the fast period, were allegedly hijacked by government officials and sold in the open market. The donations did not get to the real people they were intended for.
The situation has hardly changed in the current efforts by the government in extending palliatives to the poorest Nigerians in its social intervention programmes. If anything rather, Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic in the country, has exposed the fault lines of these intervention programmes.
President Muhammadu Buhari may have meant well in his nationwide address on the pandemic and the need to extend the lock down on Lagos, Ogun and Abuja, particularly in acknowledging the impacts of the measure on certain segments of the society. He said, “No country can afford the full impact of a sustained restriction of movement on its economy. I am fully aware of the great difficulties experienced especially by those who earn a daily wage such as traders, day workers, artisans and manual workers.
“For this group, their sustenance depends on their ability to go out. Their livelihoods depend on them mingling with others and about seeking work. But despite these realities we must not change the restrictions”.
For those in this bracket, Buhari ordered that palliative measures such as food distribution, cash transfers and loans repayment waivers to ease their pains, be sustained.
“I have also directed that the current social register be expanded from 2.6 million households to 3.6 million households in the next two weeks. This means we will support an additional one million homes with our social investment programmes”, he announced.
On the face value, this sounds great and heart-warming. But the problem with the announcement by the President is that it is lacking in specifics. Like other vaunted programmes of the administration in this regard, Nigerians do not know who constituted the original 2.6 million beneficiaries and the criteria used in selecting them, let alone the additional one million, Buhari spoke about. Going by the World Bank report of 2018, almost half of Nigeria’s population falls below the international poverty line of $2 per day. This, thus, ranks many Nigerians as poor. Little wonder the country has displaced India as the Poverty capital of the World.
Choosing the parameters for arriving at the beneficiaries of the intervention programmes, should therefore be open and transparent. The danger in leaving the programme opaque or pushing it to serving a particular section of the country in a complex system as Nigeria, can rather complicate matters. When therefore we read reports of youths erupting in certain parts of the country, crying hunger and deprivation in the face of the lock down, they may not entirely be criminal elements. Some of them are in truth, homeless and dislocated. They barely depend on what they eke out on daily basis for survival. The restriction, imperative as it is, has worsened the situation for them. They also constitute the vulnerable in the society. To ignore them and concentrate on their counterparts in the other parts of the country in the distribution of the intervention programme, can also explain the upsurge in their restlessness.
As a way forward, there is need to reassess the success of the palliatives and the strategies in extending them. In a system as ours without reliable data, it may be quite difficult arriving at precise criteria at identifying the poorest. But for whatever it is, passing the palliatives through politicians and other interested groups, cannot yield the best result. The Constitution recognizes the 774 local Government Areas in the country. In each of the councils, the constituting towns and communities are known. The communities, on their own, know the most vulnerable within them and how to reach them. They will not be held down by party politics and partisan considerations. Religious organisations and non-governmental groups can also come handy here. But as experiences have shown, serving government officials may not be the best links in administering the social intervention programmes.
