By Faith Igbudu
Poverty can best be described as a state of not having enough material possessions or income for a person’s basic needs. Poverty may include social, economic, and political elements.
Absolute poverty is the complete lack of the means necessary to meet basic personal needs, such as food, clothing, and shelter.
This is the story of millions of Nigerians who at present cannot afford to cater for their basic human needs due to the prevailing unemployment rate, lack of infrastructure and underpaid jobs.
While the nation battles with security challenges ranging from terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, domestic violence, and other forms of societal unrest, one underlying known cause is poverty.
At present, the Nigeria Living Standard Survey (NLSS) 2019 reports that four out of every ten Nigerians (82.9 million) live below the poverty line and with the COVID-19 blow, another 10 million are likely to be pushed into poverty by 2022.
The poverty situation has necessitated expansion of the existing National Social Safety Net (NASSP) to include more ways that people can be helped even as the current Nigeria’s single register stands at 8.492 million, Poor and Vulnerable House Holds (PVHHs) made of over 36.1 million individuals.
Nigeria has indeed had an inspiring political and economic progress in the past decade. Democratisation has created a more conducive environment for carrying out reforms needed to grow the economy. Various initiatives have been implemented by government at the macro and sectoral levels, one of which is the boosting of the social safety programme.
Sadly, Nigeria is yet to record significant progress in translating this impressive economic reform into an improved well-being for the generality of Nigerians.
However, people yearn to see a drastic reduction in poverty, income inequality, malnutrition, unemployment, social exclusion and insecurity, amongst others. This is despite the fluctuations in crude oil price and production.
This is why the National Social Safety-Net Coordinating Office (NASSCO) was established in 2016 by the Government of Nigeria in partnership with the World Bank to strengthen social safety nets and the social protection system in Nigeria as a core strategy to help end extreme poverty and to promote shared prosperity.
The core mandate of NASSCO therefore is to lay a strong foundation of rigorous and reliable evidence of poor and vulnerable households in Nigeria, by building a National Social Register (NSR), as well as coordinate, refine and integrate the social safety-net programs into social protection systems, while ensuring policy coherence.
Social safety-nets are part of broader social protection systems comprising non-contributory transfers in cash or in kind, designed to provide support for the poor and vulnerable. Social safety-nets play a number of important roles. For example, they help alleviate poverty, food insecurity, and malnutrition; they contribute by reducing inequality and boosting shared prosperity; they support households in coping with shocks; they help build human capital and connect people to job opportunities; and they are an important factor in shaping social contract between the government and citizens.
The development objective of the National Social Safety Nets Project for Nigeria is to provide access to targeted transfers to poor and vulnerable households under an expanded national social safety nets system. It comprises the following two components. The first component, establishing the foundation for a National Social Safety Net System is to strengthen and consolidate the building blocks of a safety net system at the national and state levels that can deliver targeted support to poor households across Nigeria.
In Nigeria, the flagship programmes that are targeted to help the poor and vulnerable include: the National Cash Transfer Office (NCTO), implementing cash transfers to targeted vulnerable households; Youth Empowerment and Social Support Operations (YESSO), supporting vulnerable youths with life skills trainings, grants and reorientation; and the Community and Social Development Project (CSDP) providing grants to boost the development agenda of vulnerable communities. These programs were encapsulated in the Government of Nigeria under the National Social Safety Nets Project (NASSP).
The Benue State Coordinating Unit
In Benue, NASSP Operations Coordinating Unit (SOCU) has revealed that the state is currently grappling with 265, 475 (PVHHs) made up of 1,141, 295 million individuals, poor individuals according to National Social Register (NSR 2021) in addition to the over 1 million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) as released by Benue State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA 2021).
The Benue Social Register (SR) as at 30th June 2021, showed that 9 local government areas in the state have been captured by poverty. They are: Ado, Buruku, Guma, Gwer West, Konshisha, Ogbadibo, Oju, Ushongo and Vandeikya.
In details, Oju was able to capture the highest households with 37, 932 households making up for 176,958 individuals. Followed closely by Konshisha with 36,558 households making up for 153, 719 individuals.
The age chart of population of Benue SR shows that 16.1% of the 1.141, 295 individuals living in poverty are between 0-5 years, 30.0% are between 6-15years, 33.2% are between 16 – 35 years, 18.0% are between 36 -65 years and 2.7% are above 65 years.
Putting the active years of man together, it can be seen that 33.2% of 16- 35 years and 18.0% of 36 – 65 years will total 51.2% of active individuals who are below the poverty line. This means 584, 683.52 individuals of the said population if properly managed, should have no business being in this data and by extension reducing the rate of poverty in the state.
The SR also reveals that out of the nine local governments captured in the poverty line, Guma ranks the highest in low school enrollment with 96% low education rate, followed by Ado with 94%, then Gwer-West and Oju in a tie with 91%. Ado is next with 87% followed by Buruku with 86% while Ogbadibo and Vandeikya tie with 81%.
Poverty, Education and the Benue Social Register.
From the population figures given by NASSP Benue State Operations Coordinating Unit (SOCU) which stands at 1,141, 295 million, the education level of households implicated read: those with no education – 61.9%, those with primary – 22.6%, those with SSCE/GCE – 9.6%, those with JSS 3 – 4.3% and less than 0% for any other educational qualifications.
Same data indicated that from the 1,141,295 million poor persons in the state, the level of technical education amongst them is 0%.
With this data, it can be deduced that education is a major determinant in the wealth, growth and development of a people. There is indeed a connection between the level of education of a people and their poverty level.
When people lack education, they become handicapped in providing for their basic needs and by extension, their dependants too and soon they fall within the poverty line.
That is not all. The lack of education also makes such persons destructive in nature, destroying all developmental projects embarked on by the government. They are also susceptible to crimes, easily engrafted to crime syndicates that terrorise the society. They become violent in nature and can easily be used as thugs to cause mayhem, especially in the political arena.
Way forward
Knowing the above and its weight on the society, it is clear that the time is ripe to pay attention to the data and salvage the situation.
Now is the time that the government should harp on this data that has been made easily accessible and readable for the purpose of planning and engineering development of the state.
With this data, government can no longer do guess work as the Benue Social Register presents a vivid description of happenings especially in the nine affected areas.
Anongu Simon, a public affairs analyst is of the view that it is high time to start foundations that will empower people with survival skills to help people live meaningful lives.
He said, it is a wake-up call for every well meaning daughter and son of Benue State to utilize the data generated by NASSCO and play a role in reducing poverty, strengthening the educational foundation of the state in the best way possible and set up life changing establishments where the poor and vulnerable will benefit.
As the governorship intrigues for 2023 begin in earnest, it is hoped that aspirants will take to the top burner the poverty statistics that Benue State is currently battling with, to capture in their campaign policies and programmes that will uplift the populace.