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‘Seven Thousand Naira (N 7,000) Per Month for Jigawa Disabled’: A Good Intention, But… By Muhammad Saddiq Sheffield UK
First, I would like to say ‘good for you’ to my friends from Jigawa – and they are a lot, and the entire people of the state for having a governor that wants to do something about the poor. It did not come as a surprise to me at all considering the antecedents of the new governor – he belonged to and was moulded by the pro-poor PRP of the late Mallam Aminu Kano. However, making statements like paying N7, 000 monthly to the disabled in the state as a means of ridding the state of beggars, though well intentioned, showed how far behind the times the understanding of poverty by the governor remains. While I do not claim expertise to field of managing poverty, the following are quite clear. The world has changed significantly since the time when poverty was seen as lack of income. In fact for several reasons, the concept of ‘poverty’ itself is not considered to be useful in addressing the myriads of problems our societies face today. Chief among these is that it connotes that the poor are responsible for being in that state – ‘victim blaming’. Additionally, it supports the idea of charity with the consequence of perpetuating the difference between the rich and the poor.
Deprivation is a multi-dimensional problem and can not be solved by just giving a monthly stipend. This is not only unsustainable in our circumstance, but will not make any impact on the lives of the people it was intended for. It is not worth analysing what N7, 000 a month would do to the life of a person in Nigeria, but one thing is clear even without digging deep. It is not enough to sustain an average person for one month in Jigawa state if you consider cost of feeding, school for children and basic health care to mention just a few and therefore it would not stop them from begging even if the money was utilized efficiently. It would be an entirely different thing if they decided to use it otherwise or go for ‘amarya’ as is well known with similar windfalls in the past. The money would be exhausted in the first week and begging would continue. Moreover, it may weaken the zeal of working to earn a living for those already making the effort. In fact, by the time the programme starts full swing the number of disabled in the state will increase exponentially – thanks to free movement and fuzzy citizenship boundaries.
It is vital for our leaders to understand that in most situations the so called poverty is enforced on the population as a consequence of the political, economic and cultural system in which we operate. Instead of poverty, what we have in our communities is ‘deprivation’, in that people having the capacity and desire to work and earn living are denied access to the means to achieve that. This is done deliberately by ‘socially excluding’ them from the fortuitously relatively advantaged few. For example notwithstanding your capacity and intentions access to education, health, housing, food or even respect is made only available to ‘the critical few’ and the significant majority are left either totally without access or with public services that are just nominal.
Therefore, backed with good intention of doing something for the deprived in the state, the governor should look at the problem more systematically. There are, I believe, experts on this issues from Jigawa state itself, who the governor can call upon to submit meaningful and implementable proposals on how to reintegrate the vast majority of the population into the mainstream.
Finally, while the governor should be commended for remembering the socially excluded in his state he should be mindful of the pitfalls in his suggested programme. Rather, he should concentrate on efficient use of whatever resources the state has and will get. The ‘disabled’ are facing the same problems with majority of the ‘able bodied’ citizens which is lack of access to services that would integrate them in to the society. |