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Poverty – the condition of living without basic human needs like clean water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter is often blamed (especially in developing nations of Africa) on the existence of inefficient institutions, corruption among leaders and the ever obvious political instability.

Corruption in Nigeria for example explained the reported $400 billion in estimate, of the country’s oil revenue stolen by Nigeria’s leaders between 1960 and 1999.

It is no longer news in fact, that African nations typically fall toward the bottom of any list measuring small size economic activity like income per capita or GDP per capita, despite a wealth of natural resources. In 2009, 22 of 24 nations identified as having “Low Human Development” on the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI) were located in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region to which Nigeria gladly belongs.

In addition, Africa’s share of income has been consistently dropping over the past century by any measure. Although GDP per capita incomes in Africa have also been steadily growing, measures are still far better in other parts of the world, such as Latin America, which suffers from many of the same disadvantages.

Poverty is caused by so many factors like corruption, brain drain, poor health and education. Infectious diseases such as Malaria and tuberculosis can equally perpetuate poverty by diverting health and economic resources from investment and productivity.

Malaria for instance, is widely reported to decrease GDP growth by up to 1.3% in some developing nations while AIDS decreases African growth by 0.3 – 1.5% annually. Also war, political instability and crime, also can lead to poverty. Wars and conflicts in Africa for instance, cost the continent some $300 billion between 1990 and 2005 alone and when these issues are over, the nations affected often begin from the scratch. Some even begin life as borrowing nations.

Poverty can result to ill-health, malnutrition and hunger. In Northern Nigeria for instance, efforts are underway to eradicate health problems as malnutrition, kwashiorkor, and upper cleft disease among infants. According to the World Health Organization, hunger and malnutrition are the single gravest threats to the world’s public health and malnutrition is by far, the biggest contributor to child mortality, present in half of all cases.

Natural incidence like earthquakes, rainstorms, flooding, drought and erosion can induce poverty too. Poverty can lead to diseases, high mortality among infants, increase in school drop outs, high juvenile delinquency rates, higher levels of teenage pregnancy, and economic dependency on others, prostitution, homicides and other forms of violence. Poverty greatly reduces populations.

Despite being touted as the giant of Africa, the Nigerian socio-political economy has undergone several reforms, ups and downs over the past 10 years, and still experiences some of the frosty twists mentioned above albeit, the vast problems basically relate to corruption, inflationary trends and often poor fiscal value.

The problems of unemployment, affordable housing; access to quality and functional education, inadequate health services and epileptic service sector like power are only some of the many problems that continuously fortify poverty in Nigeria despite several funds committed to curbing if not eradicating the trend.

There have been several economic initiatives adopted from the World Bank, and other development-support groups over the years but still the problems have shown the stark poverty that exists especially among Nigeria’s rural population, which is believed to accommodate most of the nation’s wealth and people.

Oddly enough, a disclosure in August 2010 by the Millennium Development Goals at a workshop on Validation of the 2010 MDGs report and five-year Countdown strategy (CDS) for Nigeria, showed that five of every ten Nigerians are still poor.

The report further implied that the plans by the Federal Government to eradicate the menace of poverty by 2015 are unrealistic thus, casting huge doubt in the country’s ability to meet with targets of maternal health and even environmental sustainability.

This piece of sad but informed news coming from a government agency may have thrown many aback, but it speaks volumes of the problems ahead and prospects for the future of the country. As expected, the Federal Government not resting on its oars especially in the backdrop of this paralysis, further attempted to prove its capacity to resolve these issues.

In the reasoning of government, initiating such a bold move to create jobs through partnership with private operators in five sectors of the economy namely: entertainment, building and construction, information and communication technology, meat and leather, and hospitality is the best move at this time. Not bad, but how sincere?

Whether or not such move is politically motivated, or genuinely conceived for selfless reasons is unclear nonetheless, Nigerians are ever less concerned with whatever the initiatives are but rather, the outcomes of these boring policies on poverty alleviation and much hyped economic empowerment.

The report also stresses that of the eight goals target, Nigeria has recorded an average performance on five with less satisfactory performance in three others.
In the less satisfactory category are: goal 1 which is the aim to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by 2015; goal 5 which is an improvement in maternal health and goal 7 which covers environmental sustainability. Goal 7 by this report is being coded as unlikely to be achieved by the nation.

The other five areas in which the report suggests Nigeria has made improvement include Universal primary education, gender equality, reduced child mortality, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and others. It however blames the long period of military leadership for absence and loss of disciplined culture of generating reliable and consistent baseline date for national planning and development.
These ‘facts’ are quite open to question, but for optimism’ sake, it is encouraging.

The Special Assistant to the President on MDGs, Amina Az-Zubair even hailed these count down strategy as key objectives to identifying the most effective mechanisms and interventions that have made progress against the MDGs.

She was glowing about these achievements probably because she is unaware of the new child mortality challenges cholera is posing in the rural North, and rising wave in HIV/AIDS cases in Rivers State alone, or the unsolved cases of the malaria scourge everywhere!

Putting the MDGs report aside, a new trend of fear is beginning to envelope the minds of population experts, and that is coming on the heels of a report made available by the British Council early September 2010 about Nigeria’s active population.

According to the independent project by Next Generation Nigeria, in collaboration with British Council and the Harvard School of Public Health, if the Nigerian government does not take steps to engage the fast growing population of young Nigerians, the nation could face a “demographic disaster”.

With a population of over 140 million, about 27 million Nigerians are believed to be unemployed (National Bureau of Statistics). This ought to be a trajectory for further development, considering the huge implications this could have on the economy. It has even being severely reported before now that the nation is deprived of millions in naira (in tax revenue) yearly because of the lack of jobs for these youths who could have been taxable but have inevitably become exempt given their circumstance.

According to the report, if government takes advantage of the boom by creating about 25 million jobs within the next ten years, thus investing in its youth (young worker population); Nigeria’s income could be tripled during the next twenty decades. However, to achieve this grand feat of grace, a lot needs to be done.

The redundancy plague has held the nation captive for so many years as it could be recalled that in 2009, the Federal Government accepted World Bank’s figure of 40 million (28.57%) unemployed people in Nigeria. Though there were no details of how the Bank arrived at that figure, the admission by the then Minister of Labour, Adetokunbo Kayode that Nigeria had such unemployment crisis, gave credence to the report.

Two years before this (in 2007), the Federal Government disclosed that about 70 percent of Nigeria’s population lived below the poverty line, and even at that, no concrete measures were taken to address the situation.

The current figure on unemployment by the National Bureau of Statistics (i.e. 27 million) may shock many; there are those who even think it could be much more.
While some analysts have reasoned that the huge rate of unemployment cannot be completely alienated from the impact of the global economic crisis that rocked the world, others think that can not be blamed for our situation.
Nonetheless, more attention according to this British Council supported project should be focused on health and education, with less emphasis on oil wealth but other equally viable sectors of the economy. Director of Programmes for British Council in Nigeria, Ben Fisher points that the oil industry accounts for up to forty percent of Nigeria’s GDP yet ironically does not even create many jobs for the population.

The danger in this fresh prediction is simple, that if the nation fails to tap into the positive gains in the boom, i.e. if adequate policies are not put in place in order to reap the demographic dividend, the outcome could be disastrous. The implication here is that the youth, many of whom will be unemployed, are definitely going to be potential tools for social unrest and political instability.

The ‘Next Generation’ report on Nigeria amongst other things, also advised government to pay attention to Nigeria’s young population and development by tapping into their energies, releasing their thoughts, innovative and entrepreneurial potentials and provide them with access to better opportunities for political expression.

Going by this trend in population growth, the report suggests that Nigeria will become the fifth most populous nation in the world with about 230 million people by the year 2050. As frightening as this may sound, the positive benefits can still be achieved.

Nigerians believe this can be achieved but not without the all important, elusive ‘right’ leadership to help steer Nigeria toward achieving the upbeat side of this boom by promptly initiating policies that will enhance and create opportunities especially for the many jobless youth, thus settling the long standing problems of unemployment and other socio-challenges critical to development.

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