Poverty as incentive for social dislocation
Poverty in Nigeria is fast becoming a weapon, a dangerous one. Anyone who has watched a trending video showing retired police officers demanding to be paid their pensions and gratuities would acknowledge the reality of this simmering threat. The message from that scene is scary as it portends readiness for someone to use what they […]
Poverty in Nigeria is fast becoming a weapon, a dangerous one. Anyone who has watched a trending video showing retired police officers demanding to be paid their pensions and gratuities would acknowledge the reality of this simmering threat. The message from that scene is scary as it portends readiness for someone to use what they have, to get what society has denied them.
It is not a secret anymore that Nigeria’s rank of the poor is growing. As this group swells, it provides a supply line for groups that are ready to vent their anger on the larger society for being excluded from the centre of activities.
Clearly, Nigeria’s war against social vices will be hard to win while there are factors that incentivise such behaviour. One of such factors driving social dislocations and anti-social inclinations is poverty. Therefore, if poverty persists in a country, as it does now in ours, that serves as a ready pipeline to supply all the needs of gangs, ready to make life uncomfortable for the rest of society.
For those who have not watched the video referred to above, one of the retired officers, an ASP, went to the extent of vowing to join the terrorists, if his entitlements, including what he calls “my hijacking gratuity,” are not paid to him, he having waited for so long. Since he is still active, hale and hearty, he threatened to join the group as an instructor. He can train in weapons handling, etc.
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However, this video and the story from it are not just about retired police officers whose lives have been redefined by the dysfunctions of the system they once served loyally. It is rather the story of the deepening immiseration of Nigerians through the defects in the system we have operated for decades. It is about the increasing level of poverty in Nigeria and should provoke questions about what can or must be done.
This type of story could create a classification challenge for an editor. A typical reporter to cover this event would be a Police Affairs reporter, but in truth, this is a story about poverty. While there may be no desk in the newsroom dedicated to poverty, the substance of the story is the plight of those who were doing well yesterday but now eat on the floor.
Poverty has various dimensions, as Nigerians now know. These various shades and faces of poverty represent the dynamics of this social and economic phenomenon and show how its incidence grows in society. The police officers in question were probably not classified as poor people while they served in the Force. Their monthly salaries, no matter how small, were flowing in, and as this continued, they were able to fix their daily challenges, taking care of their families.
Now, their stories have changed. They are no longer in active service; employment has ended. Sadly, the cushion they expect from their pensions has failed to come. This is poverty. As this column has explained previously, a lack of jobs is one of the causes of poverty. This is more so in situations where the individuals involved have neither investments nor landed property that they can turn into cash flow. For people who served and retired from the police, there is a high probability that many of them relied almost exclusively on their monthly remunerations.
Without jobs and without assets that they can rely on, and with gratuities not coming, these ex-servicemen are now, by definition, poor. This is part of the dynamics of poverty. It means that someone who was “rich” last year or two years ago can become poor today because their material conditions have changed. They are no longer able to access the basket of goods and services that they once enjoyed.
Besides, in the inflationary environment in which Nigerians currently live, pensioners or retirees are among the worst off. With their fixed incomes trickling in occasionally, their welfare is at the mercy of inflation, which, of course, is not friendly at all to that class of people. Those on fixed incomes are among the worst hit by the scourge of inflation.
This development implies that governments and their systems indeed contribute to the existence of poverty levels in their countries. As the American philosopher and professor Noam Chomsky has said, “There are no poor countries — only systems that have failed in managing resources.” This is a theme that has featured frequently on this page since its debut four years ago. Whether they admit it or not, governments cause differing levels of social and economic existence in their countries through the policies and the systems they impose on their citizens.
Think about it and relate this to the story of the police officers. They and many other Nigerians have found themselves in a dire situation because of the failure of the system. In other words, if the system worked differently, they probably would not be classified as poor today. When systems fail, when systems operate by excluding some groups of people from the centre, poverty is the consequence.