Poverty: Alleviation, Reduction and Eradication = Multiplication?

It is a much hated word both by the rich and the poor, yet it stubbornly sticks to many and the more resolute we are in alleviating it, the more tenacious it clings to us. For as long as anyone remembers, poverty alleviation has been in the realm of campaign slogan of various governments as it is in their budget. Even when inserted in the budget of its own, it has a way of developing wings with which it flies away beyond the reach of the rich and the pangs of the poor. Trying to acquire legitimacy and solicit support (these are military equivalent of political campaign), the General Olusegun Obasanjo-led government in 1977 launched Operation Feed the Nation (did it not metamorphosed to Obasanjo Farms Nigeria Ltd?), the aim of which was to produce abundant food more than enough to put three square meals on the table of every Nigerian, and to export the excess in order to earn huge foreign exchange in hard currency. Don’t remind me that the acronym OFN is as good for Nigeria as it is for Obasanjo; after all, is OFN not OFN? Welcome sir, President Alhaji Shehu Shagari. His background as a man from the arid region of the country may have informed his choice of ‘Green Revolution’ as his mantra to reduce poverty and turn the entire country into a green-belt where foodstuffs oozes out of its own accord, begging to be picked. However, food refused to be fooled as it is either that Shagari knew nothing about cultivation or that he forgot the crating prowess of his man-Friday, the honourable Dr. Alhaji Umaru Dikko. A man well schooled in political dichotomy, Dikko wasted no time in dissecting the grey areas of the green-belt and crated everything away for the rainy day. Even when reminded that Nigerians has become hungrier during the green revolution than before it, Dikko was quick at making unscheduled visit to the dust-bins after which he proudly announced that he found no Nigerian picking the waste-bins for dinner! Meaning? Of course, that there was food, too much food for everyone except those who refused to eat from the gutter! It took the fire-eating crate-master, the no-nonsense General Buhari who kicked-out Likita Dikko and his Oga, got the didactic Dikko crated for a possible bump-off, when the British Customs rudely intervened to get the decrepit human cargo discharged. What a grey revolution! Remember Babangida’s (some argued that it was his wife Maryam) Better Life for Rural Women? Apart from its ugly acronym BLRW, it was worsened by the only seeming qualification needed to become a beneficiary. You had to be not only a wife to a public servant, you must also submit yourself to a comprehensive skin bleaching regime and this must be confirmed by the armada of screechy cosmetics screaming out of your make-up bag (some vowed arsenal is more like it). No wonder, rural women wisely avoided BLRW like the plague it turned out to be! You see, after a fiasco such as BLRW, the fight against poverty needed a new zeal and zest and so, Maryam Abacha took our women to China from where they won a gold medal weighing 30% eradication of male chauvinism and an increase of 70% of female euphemism, the end result of which was a gender war fought ferociously in kitchen fisticuffs and by verbal assaults on the dining tables, with attendant denials and refusals at bedtime. If anyone won this war, tell me who? If poverty eradication was its target, poverty multiplication became its destination. Where is the berekete, or the yanfu-yanfu food? If poverty remains an object of hate, truth is even more hated in our shores. If we must hear the truth, it is that all governments from 1976 to 2012 has failed to alleviate, reduce or eradicate poverty, in spite of the trillions in Naira voted for or expended on it in one guise or the other. The National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP) returned unintended but debilitating multiplication of poverty, quite unfortunately. Why has the governments failed at the fight against poverty, you ask? Well, I too have asked that question and no one appears to have a reasonable answer. I was on the verge of losing all hope when I came across this: CAEI. If NITEL and M-Tel turned out as failures and MTN and GLO became very successful, CAEI looks more likely to become a success story where NAPEP failed dismally. What is CAEI? Civil Awareness and Economic Empowerment Initiative = CAEI. Digging deep, I sought to know their objectives and found that they are a non-governmental organization dedicated to partnering with all tiers of government, corporate bodies, international agencies and philanthropic individuals in eradicating mental, material and financial poverty. Their methods sound so creative and appear so realistic that no donor or investor or sponsor needs to do it a second time. The CAEI has a prudent way of turning your one-time investment into a revolving scheme, which will not only return your full investment, but also that which will not require an annual budget for a repeat investment in the war against poverty. As if Providence has come to the rescue of the poor, the CAEI may not be alone in this ingenious way of eradicating poverty, as I am informed of another group known as Unity in Diversity Initiative (UiDI) whose programmes are said to be similarly designed. Is it time to say bye-bye to the menace of poverty?