Palliatives: Teach them how to fish instead!

The First Lady and the Comptroller General of Customs recently unveiled a N500 million Customs Wives Association (COWA) “support fund” for vulnerable Nigerians. While undoubtedly, they mean well, the support fund really highlights all that is wrong with the current approaches towards alleviating poverty in the nation. At the occasion, the first lady’s representative proudly […]

The First Lady and the Comptroller General of Customs recently unveiled a N500 million Customs Wives Association (COWA) “support fund” for vulnerable Nigerians. While undoubtedly, they mean well, the support fund really highlights all that is wrong with the current approaches towards alleviating poverty in the nation.

At the occasion, the first lady’s representative proudly stated that the current administration supports every initiative to take Nigeria out of hardship. This of course is quite derisible. It isn’t the government’s job to support relatively minuscule charity initiatives with limited outreach and limited impact, it’s their job to define a strategy, conceptualise holistic plans, and implement policies designed to take the majority of Nigerians out of poverty.

The quality of life of Nigerians is undeniably reducing daily and a strategy is required to prevent things from getting worse. Admittedly, today’s economic deterioration cannot be blamed entirely on the current administration, but they undeniably accelerated the dire circumstances. The bulk of the blame lies firmly at the door of the disastrous Buhari administration that lowered the bar for “successful governance” to a level where mass deprivations, inability to govern properly, complacency, greed, corruption and lack of high intellect at the top echelons became acceptable. The end result of ignoring the worsening plight of the majority, and failing to implement any plan for mass employment was poverty alleviation being reduced to a “palliative culture” which involved rushing around in panic mode handing out unverifiable amounts of palliatives or cash to assuage growing resentment and anger.

The most dismal aspect of the palliative culture adopted by government is that rather than provide a permanent solution to mass poverty it allows political officeholders to simply express regret over the situation, deny responsibility, lament about the paucity of funds, and chest beat over measly palliative measures, while happily squandering scarce public resources on their personal comforts.

Even as traditional rulers are currently voicing concern, protest marches are erupting, and labour unions are flexing their muscles over government’s failure to properly address issues of poverty it’s worrisome that the current administration appears to have no discernible plan for extracting the nation from the economic predicament they disastrously accelerated. It is trite that failing to plan, means planning to fail!

Things were not always like this. There was a time when political leaders actually had plans for future generations. They felt a responsibility towards uplifting their people by education and skill acquisition, and then took it upon themselves to ensure that the jobs were available. Indeed, there is a viral social media video in which in the 1950’s a well-known First Republic northern leader answered questions from a BBC reporter with regard to jobs in the North which he felt should be reserved for northerners. His reply was that his responsibility was towards his people and his plan to uplift them based upon succeeding in higher education was being thwarted by jobs not being available for them. Having taught them how to fish, his concern was that water was not being made available for them to fish in! 

Those currently in authority must desist from simply expressing support for a multiplicity of unbudgeted palliative schemes or handing out cash, fertiliser, grains or farming implements to ameliorate growing frustration and squarely face their responsibility of ensuring citizens have marketable employment skills and jobs are available.

Nigeria has adequate resources to deserve a government which spends time and resources tending to citizens who cannot meet their basic needs. Unfortunately, Nigerian political officeholders tend to look upon the poor and needy as failures in life irrespective of their lack of opportunities in life. However, it is the duty of government to accept responsibility, set up structures and establish processes for such citizens to access required assistance.

The National Assembly must create a much-needed Ministry of Social Security with a first-line charge and robust legislation specifying those citizens whom the government must care for, and the manner in which the care should be administered.

Emergency palliative measures are not the solution to poverty alleviation. The “teach a man to fish” philosophy is particularly relevant in times of hardship and poverty when many people find themselves unable to break out of a cycle of poverty. The saying goes that if you give a man a fish, you have fed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish you have fed him for a lifetime. Giving proper assistance to the poor means rather than giving them short-term aid, teaching them how to become independent to gain long-term security.

Poverty alleviation cannot be achieved by continuously handing out palliatives without a defined process of accountability. Government must immediately shift away from giving out charity in a manner prone to fraud and instead operate state ministries of social security specifically designed to provide financial assistance to the personal bank accounts of registered citizens.

Mass poverty cannot be eradicated by publicly handing out panic palliatives to random unskilled illiterate citizens. “Teaching people how to fish” means educating them to inculcate design-thinking to adapt to future situations.

Nigeria’s outdated educational system which rewards simple memorisation of facts must be completely overhauled so that future generations of school leavers will be conversant with design mentality and problem-solving for communal improvement and self-sustenance. In every permanent solution to mass poverty, the importance of teaching people how to fish cannot be overemphasized.