Dynamics of Poverty as Culture in Nigerian World: Implications for the Vulnerable Population

By

Dr. Patrick  Iroegbu

patrickiroegbu@yahoo.com

“There is virtually nobody in our own rural areas as far as I know that does not know what he will eat tomorrow morning. Now, there is poverty, yes, but there is no abject poverty” – President Olusegun Obasanjo (In his monthly meet the press on the affairs of the nation - The President Explains, November 2004).

Introduction

The topic of poverty discourse in Nigeria and Africa will never be finished, at least, not for now. In the present article, I provide insight into the meaning of “culture of poverty” and holicization of deprivation due to political and economic administrative noise making competences in Africa, in particular Nigeria. I also attempt to show how poverty is defined by the poor rather than by the bureaucrats and political foragers, if you like call them scavengers, in Nigeria as it may apply to elsewhere in Africa or Asia. My approach here will be inferential based on Nigerian local and urban community everyday life reality. I will also be drawing from write ups on poverty issues and strategies to alleviate the African scarceness, in particular the Nigerian poverty syndrome. Related series that may well be of topical interest are as follows – Nigerian factor and project antecedentization poverty, women and feminization of poverty, child and childization of poverty, elder and old ageism poverty, spiritual and spiritualization poverty, health and healthization poverty, skill and servicization poverty and a lot more poverty jingoisms that surely will need deeper questioning, research refocusing and vigorous arguments. With all these in mind, I will in the first place review the origin of the “culture of poverty” discourse and move the argument from there – and try and apply this concept to the Nigerian reality of poverty management in the contemporary democratic exercise of the nation taken as a whole.            

To be employed is the term and phrase “foraging” and “development culture” respectively to refer to a pattern of life where leaders who call themselves elected or appointed political administrators hunt and gather Nigeria’s economic resources by using their empowered political offices. These offices are given to them by virtue of their levels of official power and authority for which they turn around to control forms of resources to their own ends. Unfortunately, one will argue, in the process of controlling those economic, political, and social resources, they create a “culture of poverty” for others. The concept of culture of poverty will also be used to highlight that hunting and gathering are just only one way people in the early human civilization struggled for survival. Today, this foraging approach cannot stand modern development drives and cultural diversity. It has changed and therefore there is a need to draw attention to, and reinforce, the leaders that modern democracy is based on collective production and reproduction rather than on self centered foraging way of life. Take it or leave it, “you do not just go into political life to forage or gather the others’ resources to yourself.” You seek political office to invest and re-invest for the greater public good, not for a select few or for individual self. And in the process of re-investing for the public good there will be a big effect on poverty change and adaptation. Lack of proper political administrative discipline and rule of law not only will drive away investors, but also will hinder domestic and foreign interests and partnerships in development to alleviate poverty.

Perhaps, one can say that by the present stage of foraging democracy in Nigeria, the leaders are merely “tactical doom foragers.” They are because rather than helping poverty to decline, they forage for themselves and thereby escalate suffering and lack of ability for the poor to challenge poverty and cope with the complexity of political and economic modernity. These leaders are yet to become democrats as Prof. Omoruiyi once stated. Indeed, the leaders need to work hard to become exemplary political managers that modernity and diasporism have both largely called on them to come to order through paying attention to the poor and the stubbornness of poverty.

In the 1960s, social scientists such as Oscar Lewis discussed poverty of life pattern in the cities of Mexico, Puerto Rico and New York. What did he find and establish that Africa, and particularly Nigeria to learn from? I will now present Lewis’ view on poverty in the theme following.

Oscar Lewis and Culture of Poverty

            What made this author Oscar Lewis (1966)[1] to write and theorize “culture of poverty” in the 1960s especially his publication, La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty – San Juan and New York, that has been well studied and commented upon since 1966? What was he calling policy live wires to order for? Or was he expressing a shock he encountered in a study of the urban poor in Mexico, Puerto Rico and New York? What can we deduce from that research report? No matter how it may be taken, politics and economics are interwoven. Often we hear about terms like political economy or political and economic resources management. One brings the other and in between them is the law of governance to regiment order and practice. In the process of creating resources and managing the distribution of those resources, only a few people become rich and therefore leave the greater majority deprived, hence poverty and the culture of deprivation following it. Mangin (1970)[2] rehearses that the poor of a given country have more in common with their compatriots in that country than with the poor in other societies. In addition, this is true in terms of the cultural views of the world, ideal family and kinship patterns, aspirations, values, and even body movements, and language habits, which the poor of a country share in common with the rest of their country or culture than they part with the poor of another country or culture (Mangin 1970: xvii, see also Hutter 1988:149). This observation by Mangin in 1970 came when the author rendered a critic of the culture of poverty propounded by Oscar Lewis (Lewis 1966). Lewis’s study of culture of poverty has been instrumental and innovative in understanding poverty in cities. Lewis focused on the poor in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and New York. His thesis portrayed how different families were organized around a conceptual framework that he called the culture of poverty.

To further entangle Lewis’s poverty mis-en-scene, the following questions are necessary to be raised: how is the culture of poverty today in Nigeria? Has anything changed from 1999 when the Government of People’s Democratic Party (PDP) came into power in the guises of modern democracy at the “yearning” and “calling to order” of the excesses of the military regimes by the populace? What has changed and what has not changed? What hopes now can the common man have in the changing culture of poverty reminisced to dividends of political management of Nigeria’s huge forms of human and material resources endowed to her? Is the “culture of poverty” diminishing, stable or increasing? What has been done? And what needs to be done to relieve of the culture of poverty?

            When Oscar Lewis set out to study poverty patterns, he first focused on family and life in society of the time. He argued that poverty breeds family disruption, violence, brutality, cheapness of life, lack of love, lack of education, lack of medical facilities, mental meanness and - in short a picture of incredible deprivation, the effects of which cannot be wiped out in a single generation (Lewis 1966:xiv). Lewis further contended that people who live or are made to live in capitalistic societies under poverty conditions of slums, ghettos, and squatter settlements develop similar structures, interpersonal relationships, and value systems that transcend national boundaries. Poverty is a phenomenon but what is most worrying is the development of poverty as cultural system.

Culture of poverty is seen to flourish in societies that exhibit the following features: high rate of unemployment and underemployment resulting to idleness, low wages, stress on accumulated wealth and property, personal inadequacies and inferiorities on the part of people residing in the poverty shaped societies. The implication of lifestyle of poverty is that it breeds self-perpetuating and self-defeating cultural approaches to gain emancipation. That is because people who live in poverty, resonate with mental structuring which often looks as ones governed by hopelessness and despair. The inability for the poor to put off the satisfaction of immediate desire in order to effectively plan for the future corroborates the fact that the poor concentrates on what can, in the short run, alleviate his or her condition rather than in the long run systematic future effort. As a result, the desire of the moment includes food, shelter, spirituality of peace and health within the lineage and urban community.

It is stressed that cultural capital[3] must be distributed to men and women in order to create competencies to challenge poverty in a changing world. Consequently, emergent policy and job centers in developed societies had since then focused on training and learning skills to the categorized poor (cf. Quadagno & Fobes 1997).[4] The educational system and cultural values of this sort have tied, presumably, feelings of achievement, upliftment, and success to the intellectual and social skills or business world. Great significance is thereby attached to attitude to work, being patient, tolerating and respecting modern economic, political and social controlling institutions that show effectiveness. Employment and gender engagements are then by and large politically required by aspirations for upward social mobility and also by a desire for a sense of competence. The poor like the women, differ with respect to the need for participation, freedom and independence, and the need for social contact, the fear of aging and low status quo and therefore of loosing vitality in role playing.         

To critically understand poverty, Lewis’s theory suggests that if a culture of poverty is lived among the poor, it is essentially a strategy to cope with their poverty and cannot be by itself the cause of poverty. Although that the ‘culture of poverty’ accompanies the poor, it is not in the same measure in all cases in all regions of the world. Here, of course, two questions one can ask are these. “Is it a mistake of the poor to live in poverty they did not initiate, cause and sustain from the top to bottom approach? Who is sustaining poverty as a way of life for the poor? While there is a believe that there is perpetuation of poverty as a way of life by the following generations of the poor, it appears to me that in Nigeria it is the very leaders and bureaucrats that immerse into it, play to the gallery as if they mean to concretely challenge it and in the end poverty remains successfully not knocked down. I will further show how this is so in the poverty alleviation programs in Nigeria since the 1970s till date in the next theme ahead that I will soon discuss. Nevertheless, the following characteristics surround poverty as shown by Lewis and the question again is what could these characteristics mean for Nigeria? 

Characteristics of Culture of Poverty

            Oscar Lewis identified over 70 traits that characterize the culture of poverty and categorized them into four groups, namely,

• The relation between the subculture and the larger society: This involves disengagement and none integration of the poor in the major institutions of empowerment of the larger society. It also pertains to ethnic segregation and discrimination, fear, suspicion bet, and apathy. Lack of effective participation and chronic unemployment experienced by school leavers at all levels and underdevelopment; and I add - high migration outside the country and inverted priority of brain drain. Are these features true for Nigeria? If the answer is yes, the argument about culture of poverty is then institutionally made and remade for the poor.

• The nature of residential community: Areas of residential nature most of which are characteristically depicted in slum and ghetto life such as poor housing conditions, crowding, and gregariousness are obviously a worrying stay and development. For this, Lewis argues, requires just a minimum input for re-organization beyond the nuclear and the extended family system. The urban Nigerian poor is ridiculed by the system of slum life such as Ajegunle in Lagos and various Sabon Garis (strangers’ quarters) in different cities of Nigeria. For example, a single room may be occupied by a family of three to five children. What sort of life and health would that give to the occupants? Poor income and inconsistency in maintaining living infrastructures and facilities such as toilet and sewage, water and electricity, roads and bridges are common issues that deny adequate sanitation and decorum. Street hawking is a phenomenal episode in all Nigerian cities. What are these showing about poverty patterns? Should I ask again if this is also true in and for Nigeria? Think about it. 

• The nature of the family: Here the author argues that instability of marriage and family due to poverty is common. Family commitment and solidarity could be one of a lip service unless the underlying poverty issues are addressed. How is that in Nigeria’s poverty syndrome and family unity and progress? What educated programs and realizable legislations are addressing this?

• The attitudes, values, and character structure of the individual in society: Here also the author pointed out that individuals who grow up in the culture of poverty have strong feelings of fatalism, helplessness, dependence, and inferiority complex. Therefore there is possibility of weak ego structure, confusion of sexual responsibility, and by extension the threat of sexual related diseases and crimes such as HIV/AIDS, home and highway armed robbery violence, kidnapping galore for ransom, and insecurity to family health and community survival. These moreover reflect the implications of deprivation. Taken as a whole, how is poverty expressed within the policy programs in Nigeria’s successive administrations? To this I will now briefly highlight in also the question of what is Nigerian character in managing state funds and programs aimed to help the vulnerable population need to look like?

Speechifying Poverty Reduction Programs in Nigeria

            It is not a mistake to use the word “speechifying” here in the context of poverty programs in Nigeria. I argue that known poverty programs have lacked specificity but gained popular speeches and controversies. A run down of some of these poverty policy strategies will help to expose the Nigerian experience of governance and poverty. Beginning from General Yakubu Gowon’s military regime, the poverty program focused on rehabilitation and development after the civil war - 1967-1970 and thereafter. Gowon’s response to poverty and development aimed at what was called National Accelerated Food Production Program and the Nigerian Agricultural and Co-operative Bank devoted to agriculture and rural life up-lifting (see also Maduagwu 2000).[5] This program did not do much as it only provided opportunity for awareness that poverty is real but became worst due to war. As such, it magnified the important fact that it is the responsibility of government to design programs to address it. At the time, 1972 through 1976, importation of food and living on the economy of oil and foreign provisions formed the basis of the Nigerian view of culture of poverty following after the war.

Next was the famous “every man and woman must go to farm” known as Operation Feed the Nation (OFN), imposed on Nigerians by General Olusegun Obasanjo in 1976. Some critics have branded this economic policy as Operation Fool the Nation beginning from military agriculture to a now ex-military civilian politics (see also Arowolaju 2004).[6] By then teaching farmers in the local areas how to farm occupied the administration more than profitable strategies to develop professionals to farm and achieve results. Local farmers as we know do peasant agriculture first to eat and the rest are sold upon harvest. The fact that Operation Feed the Nation was a misplaced tactics brought the noble intention to failure after huge sums had been wasted. The poor were wrongly targeted and this continues to be the problem up to today. Worst still was that importation of basic needs of life did not curtail at the time.

Following the clowning around of Operation Feed the Nation was the Shehu Shagari’s Green Revolution Programme of 1979. In this, reducing food importation, as well as boosting crop and fibre production was made to be the instant objectives. Rather than the programme reward the poor, the big men and big women in society cashed into the fortune of acquiring lands for the purposes of obtaining grants and loans to do green farming. When the program came to an end in 1983, huge sums of money had been wasted in the like of its poverty response programme predecessors as I have just noted.

The story continues in the regime of General Mohammed Buhari whose poverty programme received the name Go Back to Land. This was followed by General Ibrahim Babangida’s Directorate of Food, Roads, and Rural Infrastructure for rural development, for short – DEFRRI. As told, feeder roads, electricity, and portable water resources and toilet facilities for local dwellers were the main focus. Again, those highly connected to the government of the day cashed into the programme and foraged what it was able to offer. For example, Community Banks and People’s Banks cropped up everywhere and investors took the opportunity to make and remake themselves in the setting. Even more blatant was the bogus Mrs. Maryam Babangida who swept her way into the poverty programme gold mine with adjunct programs such as Better Life for the Rural Women. Ironically, Nigerians quickly realized it was a circle for the urban rich women rather than the so-called poor. The problem here again was the inability of the policy formulators and strategists to target who the study poor were that had to be reached. The Office of, and office for the poor, indeed, need not be in Aso Rock of Abuja, where the office of the well connected and political rich are as the poor will have no place to park in the political parking lot. The poor are mainly in the local areas and offices and programs to reach out to them need to be sited where they are accessible. Affair intermediaries and interlocutors for the poor need also to be streamlined so that accessibility by the poor to the mainstream program to help them emancipate will be easy – through town hall and village square meetings. Aso Rock shunting edifice has no place to welcome the poor and it needs be emphasized that programs for the poor should be localized.

            General Sanni Abacha’s regime had its turn and went ahead to introduce another poor social category programme called Family Support Programme (FSP) as well as the Family Advancement Programme (FAP). Not only that the Nigerian poor again were taken for a ride, but also this regime magnified the rhetoric of using the poor to serve the bureaucrats, politicians and the rich in society. Another form of poverty adjustments brought to bear on the huge vulnerable population of the poor was the infamous 1986 SAP – Structural Adjustment Programme. This worsened things for the very poor it intended to adjust the economic structures for because the poor continues to be the victim of any economic policy decision than the well connected in government of the day. SAP increasingly became a programme of settlement to get what you want and where and how you want it at the exclusion of the poor. SAP symbolized “acting smart” and “doing not be caught” thing from the top to bottom poverty guided deprivation battle approach. Where could have the poor joined in the battle and to fight against who?

By 1989 through 1999, the war became householdized and villagized such that a looting trick bound gangster phenomenon emerged. Petrol became a metaphor for “blood” and “high-sea-killing” that it systematized endured as “rituals of huge deprivation.” This was infamously called the 419 – four-one-nine, which shot itself boldly into the local and international business community with powerful foraging scheming of finances and treasures of unsuspecting investors of all categories. In the history of development, corruption has not resolved problem of poverty, and to say the least, not when it is made a policy of economic violence, intimidation and usurpation.     

            It is interesting that in the present PDP administration led by President Olusegun Obasanjo and later on handed to his ally, Umaru Yar’Adua in a highly dis-creditated election poll; there are poverty experts and corruption crusaders, who have seen it all. A shift in emphasis strongly needed crafty tongues and hands to place issues on promoting poverty alleviation and fighting corruption. Fighting corruption in Nigeria is the bane of progress of any leadership and governance. Cases are known of the manoeuvrings between the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the big shorts looting resources meant to serve the poor and society. How far has, and would this government go? Would it go the extra mile needed to see its poverty program predecessors work out? Would the poverty alleviation programme initiatives yield results in the different clothing and head caps they wear today? There is much doubt if anything significant will come to the poor in the present dispensation. Reality check shows that the rich continues to be richer and the poor more desperate regarding hope for opportunity, security and participation in affairs to change their lives. This is because as things stand, the poor are again wrongly targeted. The ongoing politics in Nigeria is filled with overwhelming personal interests, a monopolistic resource grabbing struggles among the same big men and big women with high connections to the government of the day. By themselves, they are those who are using the political and social institutions to keep a considerable distance from the poor. There are cheating conspiracies and open confessions of such corrupt conspiracies of all sorts – the corrupt continuity syndrome in political offices irrespective of the fate of the impoverished majority that they swore to alleviate their chronic sufferings that linger on.

Who are the poor or the abject poor in Nigeria becomes and continues to become the big question as poverty remains elusive and pervasive to be tracked down. It is suggestive that if poverty alleviation program out there, or whatever nuances such programs are attached with, is designed for the really poor in Nigeria, the argument is that it cannot happen without the full participation of the people who are therefore the poor? So who are the poor in the first place must be known. There is a need to decide if it is the political foragers or the truly poor? The latter being those who cannot afford to forage the means of good quality of life. I will now proceed to define and explain who the poor in Nigeria are.                              

Who Are the Poor in Nigeria?

Defining who the poor are may not be as simple as it may seem. In Nigeria, the poor are known straight from their look and from their heart. The poor did say to this author, “do you need a book to define me?” Just look straight to me; and straight at me, my home, the food I eat, the water I drink, the track road I walk through, the farms I cultivate, the markets I go to, the churches I pray in, the health facilities I use when I fall sick. I keep goats and sheep and fowls. I cook with firewood I fetch from the bush; Kerosene? No! Gas? No! Electricity? No! I roast my corn and pea in the hot ash (ntu oku). I crack palm kernel (iti aku). I wash in the river (iyi). And I chew stick (atu) to clean up my teeth. When the seasons change from the dry to the wet, I live in fear of rain and wind dealing with my thatch hut. I cannot pass down the common roads and alleys I grew up doing things with. Worst off, local financial contributions are killing us (ntuntu, tukiritu egbula anyi) because more people are dying and we have obligation to bury them. Most dying persons agree with Charles Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest otherwise natural selection. Having luck to live while others are dying in large numbers from diseases such as diabetes, AIDS and malaria is a matter of natural selection in time and place. It is sad in the leadership world of Obasanjo and Yar’Adua. That is obasa njo, ochichi ojoo – meaning spreader of evil or bad things in the local parlance of this informant”[7] and moreover that of Umaru Yar’Adua – meaning one who knows and follows like the mad snail. So to hear the poor speak out begins the definition of who the poor are and how they feel about their poverty. Their voice, I wrote it down; as Isichei was once counselled by a 95 year old poor informant about the history of Igbo people to write his statement down – dedata ya (Isichei 1976).[8]

In order to properly understand who the poor are, or likely to be, I strongly state that the poor can be a targeted group of the deprived. By that I mean the total number of people who cannot afford the basic necessities of life such as good education, occupational skills, appropriate information, housing, food, health, social mobility and active mainstream political participation. It stretches from child to the old person. In between this is commonly found distressing unemployment and underdevelopment and lack of the use by people of their social skills and cultural or learned competencies and potentials.

In his discussion of ways of understanding and breaking the vicious cycle of poverty, ill-health and underdevelopment in Nigeria, the once Minister of Health, Prof. Eyitato Lambo (see The Guardian, January 14, 2004)[9] brought out some conceptual vignettes of poverty as it affects families, life and culture. He notes that in Sub-Saharan Africa, about 45 percent of the population lives below national poverty line. While poverty can be defined as a condition of restiveness and deprivation, it is being in position of lack to respond to basic needs. One who is poor is one who lacks capacity to generate and have a usual or socially accepted amount of money or material possessions in order to live a meaningful life. The World Development Report (1994) identifies the poor as “those who are unable to consume a basic quantity of clean water and who are subject to insanitary surroundings, with extremely limited mobility or communication beyond their immediate settlement.”

Development story in Nigeria has not been straightforward due to various ruthless military and civilian profiles. For example, statistics shows a range of population of the poor rising from 18 million in 1980 to 35 million in 1985. In 1992, it was 39 million and turned 67 million in 1996. In 2000, it was reported to be 71 million and since then the figure has continued to rise rather than decrease. Poverty has made deep penetration into lives of millions of unsuspecting ordinary Nigerians. Survival circumstances in the country had taken a turn for the worse with each passing administration and year. Rough looting of the public treasury and alarming squandering of promise of fortune - the country’s wealth, had affected the wellbeing of men and women at large since 1980 till date.

Women in particular should no longer, in my humble view, wait to rescue Nigeria and position the genders since men have consistently failed with poverty reduction programs. This is true because women constitute the majority of the poor, the underprivileged, and the economically and socially disadvantaged in most parts of the country. The situation is frustrating still, in that, reforms linked with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) strategies would require constant renegotiating of repayment of debts leading to cutbacks on social empowerment. The obligation in governments’ budgeting and implementations for results is made worse by siphoning of capital to personal interests and in all of these, their most direct negative impact fall on women and children.                 

Hagberg’s (2001) study of poverty in Burkina Faso has also shown how local people themselves in multiple ways represent the realities of poverty and this finding is equally true for Nigeria. He emphasized how the anthropological contribution provides context and a narrow definition excludes many people who are perceived as poor. He argues that poverty must be treated as contextual, situational and relational (Hagberg 2001:7). Poverty is therefore an important category of gender politics that builds first on kinship, class and society. However, defining poverty is fraught with both structural and behavioral models of explanation; and insights on this have been explored previously (Gordon & Spicker 1999, Pinker 1999, Anderson & Broch-Due 1999, Hagberg 2001).[10]     

On the other hand, the poverty line heated up in the global scene refers to the income and consumption-based level of well-being that falls in line with an approach acceptable by and applied to a population group. The international poverty line, we need to point to it, stands at an average per capita consumption of one USA dollar per day (1985 dollars), as adjusted for purchasing power differences between countries. The global poverty line is currently about 12 dollars per day whereas absolute poverty is living on less than one dollar per day (The Guardian, Jan., 14, 2004). The poverty cycle in itself entails a happen stance. That is a movement of life stressors namely increased birth and death rate, environmental, health and wellbeing issues and unavoidable poverty challenges in situations where the government of the day cares less or not all.

Generally in Nigeria, reference to poverty versus healthiness is put to about 70% and this is stressed as a serious situation. Women are the ones trapped in and, by and large, appear to suffer more than men in relation to economic and gender inequality. An important characteristic of poverty in the African region therefore concerns Nigerian women. Women consist in forms of poverty expression as various United Nations Development Reports such as the 1995 United Nations Human Development Report (UNDP 1995) revealed. Gender relation is also important part because sectors of poverty indicators are affected, namely rural livelihoods and environment, economic and political reforms to address poverty issues, decentralization of institutional structures involved in poverty discourse and initiatives, education and training for empowerment and finally health and social services.[11]

Poverty line and its implications have been stressed enough and the UNDP report has also addressed the feminization of poverty. It has been pointed out that women comprise 70% of the world’s poor. Recently, Laolu Akande reports in The Guardian of March 1, 2004 stating, "It is greatly instructive that just a few days ago, the UNDP Resident Representative in Nigeria, Mr. Tegegnwork Gettu, while launching the Osun State Chapter of the Human Development Fund (HDF), actually made it known that the percentage of the poor in Nigeria has grown, in what he termed a very negative trend, from 66 to 70 percent of the population, over the past six years."[12] Government’s poverty reduction program is yet to have impact in Nigerian situation and particularly women in both local and urban areas. So what is going on?

Gender based differences and imbalances in access to and control of economically productive resources are important issues for poverty reduction. Constraints on women to participate in development and large scale intercultural economic activities arise from certain notions and ideation of women from one society to another. More properly speaking, poverty can be said to mean inability to afford basic needs, lack of control of resources, lack of education and skills, poor health, malnutrition, lack of shelter, poor access to water and sanitation, vulnerability to shocks, violence and crime, lack of potential freedom, choice and voice (cfr. Lambo 2004, OECD 1996, Hagberg 2001). However, different measures, indicators and determinants of poverty vary, including intervention methods to reduce or eliminate it. It needs to be pointed out also that many terminologies have been used for poverty, which include, income or consumption poverty, lack of basic needs, human under-development, lack of capacity and functioning, isolation and social exclusion, relative deprivation, vulnerability, disempowerment, powerlessness, livelihood unsustainability, and ill-being. Nevertheless, poverty is now seen as a multifaceted metaphor regarding the condition of life. More noticeably, in the gender context, is the increasingly feminist profiling and feminization of poverty in its own right. This is probably so because to understand gender and unequal balance of opportunity and rights, vulnerability to labor exploitation, sexuality, skills markets, social status and identity inventions, infantalization of poverty has been forged right from ideological devices to economic and technological conundrums.

The commonality of the human experiences of poverty stem from the fact that it is both locational and social group based, which apparently produces and reproduces underlying themes of hunger, deprivation, powerlessness, violation of dignity, social isolation, resilience, resourcefulness, solidarity, state corruption, arrogance of service providers, and inexorableness of gender inequality (Nayaran et al 2000:3, Hagberg 2001:31).[13] In all of these, gender relation is a central issue around which poverty is critically mined.

            The Igbo of Nigeria, for example, do not hide from saying that poverty is oria or social sickness and is feared (itu egwu, ujo). Although many a times it is unavoidable as a subculture of civilization process. The culture of poverty serves as an adaptive function of survival whereby poor people cope with feelings of hopelessness, and despair that arise because their chances for greater socio-economic success are inaccessible. Poverty breeds social isolation and exclusion from social mainstream thinking and events. Although culture mediates peoples’ adaptation to the environment in which they live, it at the same time creates both physical and social distance from the haves and the have nots.

Aetiology of Poverty and Targeting Who the Poor Are For Action

What causes poverty in itself is a generative explanatory debate. Some said it is individualistic, others argued it is structural and the rest opined it is cultural. Other hypotheses include the diversity of classes of poor people, namely the working poor, new poor, disadvantaged poor, truly needy and so on (Jenkins & Miller 1987).[14] All of these conceptualizations of poverty are associated with three approaches, specifically – assimilation/integration, human capital and structural profiling of opportunity and access to wealth creation and participation in social service issues. Whatever is the case, I argue that one’s survival depends a lot on the larger trends in society. The ‘need of achievement’, a theory preached by an American psychologist, David McClelland in the 1960s and 1970s as a reason for failure to become rich is questionable where strong sense of achievement, innovative spirit, risk taking, and entrepreneurship mark some people’s cultural orientation and politics, such as hard working and positive risk taking ethnic groups in Nigeria. The poor exist, I contend, due to the socio-economic structure posed by the emergence of state bureaucrats and political foragers. There lies the uneven creation and distribution of wealth and power. Inequality is real in the class-based political and economic system of the society; although both gender and classism independently and collectively manoeuvre the economic, political and social capital resources available based on the unequal opportunities, skills and strengths to exploit and deprive.

As Karl Marx pointed out that in a capitalist system work is organized in a way such that economic surplus ends in the hands of the bourgeois class. Women’s groups that are involved with both psychoanalysis and Marxist theory – therefore gender and socialist politics apparently question the relation between women’s attitudes and the actual structural patriarchal conditions in relation to legal, political and economic basis of gender oppressions and poverty dynamics. Have feminist nature and sexual desires and approaches implicated them on oppressive relations and therefore led them to accept and tolerate unequal economic, legal, and sexual treatments as a whole?[15] The implication is the widening social isolation and exclusion gap between capitalists and the peasant labouring class; the latter being condemned to distressful poverty given the forms of sexual organization of labour.

Bourdieu and Passeron (1977)[16] on the other extreme placed how cultural capital means and refer to social and cultural cues. They emphasized how cultural capital can be negotiated in transforming poverty, gender and classism. Fundamentals of “cultural capital” have been noted as such elements ranging from personal lifestyle, linguistic competence, familiarity with elements of high culture like books, music or art to technical, economic or political expertise (Quadagno & Fobes 1997, 1995).[17] One of the dimensions of the theory of “cultural capital” is that it serves as a basis for exclusion and inclusion from levels of self-concept, society, jobs, resources, and high status self-control and equability. The social and cultural boundaries as Nash (1990)[18] and DiMaggio & Mohr (1985)[19] urged are simply constructed around the possession of “cultural capital,” which is transmitted across generations through the family and maintained by sociopolitical forces. To emancipate feminism and poverty, for instance, is on this premise derived from the ideology of culture of poverty. The idea that women and the poor are helpless and passive; and that leadership of liberalism would break the cycle of deprivation, and meanness that typified their existence is surmised.             

In thinking about who are the poor in Nigeria, those that readily come to mind and that require most help in the context of poverty alleviation include: the poor widows who lack any form of social support, the orphan, the critically sick and disabled persons (socially, mentally and physically), and the disengaged and isolated old age category of the poor. Others are the urban poor, displaced persons due to environmental hazards and political troubles, as well as the rusticated or sacked workers having no support opportunity to cope with their retrenched and challenging hopeless situation. The next in mind will be the retired or disengaged workers. This group of the poor is irritating because the story about filing out under the heat of sun to wait endlessly to receive the meagre pension allowances is sad. As we know, pensioners are treated as if they never served the country and institutions where they worked as normal and credible persons. Successive governments had never taken pensioners seriously and treat their affairs with dignity, respect and honour. If indeed, the present administration will engage poverty, it must face squarely the targeted groups of the poor just outlined. We cannot talk about poverty as if it is something existing elsewhere. It is with the people who move around daily under different challenges which they lack the capacity to resolve. Pensioners need a regular payment of their allowances and investment in pension development fund will go a long way to ensuring that a serious pension establishment takes the credit not to fail in that poverty area.

The next group that is so serious is the unemployed or retrenched workers. There must be committed social fund development to manage the problem of unemployment and lay-offs.[20] Job creation and assisted diversity self support initiatives to start own businesses will surely help people to think bold for themselves, learn skills and diversify into other areas of service or therefore set up their own cultural, social and economic ventures. New skills acquisition programs and centres to forestall retrenchment will inevitably support and give people new opportunities to stand for themselves and make sense of their lives and communities.[21]

The above situation mentioned with regard to helping the poor to find meaning with their lives should work with good policy determination and consistency. They have been working well since Oscar Lewis made his ground breaking study of the culture of poverty in the developed societies. In order to respond to the city poor that he studied, job centres and reinforcement agencies, as said before, were recommended whereby the deprived could go and learn new skills and search for jobs in job-banks. If any job is listed, there are usually outlined requirements or qualifications to be considered – which may include, educational level, experience, references, salary, and so on. In the event an applicant discovers that the requirements appear incomplete on his or her side, training is provided to update one’s skills for the job and position one may likely seek for. Training and support will always help to resolve traumatic instances of the laid off people may have in coping with the challenges of the uncertainty of poverty. Financial help may be needed to alleviate or cushion the effect of hard times, as a result of their misfortune.  

Another issue about poverty targeting will be to look at the very sources of crisis and crime eruption that obviously harm-bulk others. For example, religious and ethnic conflicts that have become mostly sources of economic and political ritual in the North of Nigeria are an issue that must not be ignored in planning poverty alleviation strategies. Yearly people are disorganized, maimed, killed and displaced after having worked hard to establish businesses. Displacement of successful entrepreneurs automatically squares people up to the level of poverty, if not to chronic abject poverty. So in managing poverty in Nigeria, poverty alleviation programs should pay attention to sources that promote frustration and elevate rather than decline of poverty. Crisis eruption in itself such as ethnic rivalry and religious wars known to have become systemic in Nigeria must not thrive in the fight against poverty and corruption. This by extension touches on the crises that erupt during political elections in which a large number of people die or become injured such that their lives become a burden in struggling for survival under chronic culture of poverty in Nigeria taken as a whole. 

Conclusion

This paper has examined the origin and meaning of the “culture of poverty” and emphasized the circumstances and lessons Nigeria can learn from the discourse in the pursuit for poverty understanding and its alleviation. It argued that poverty is made and remade by bureaucrats and politicians who forage the human and economic resources to their personal goals. It also advised that to address poverty, the poor need to be identified and targeted with responsible strategies to reach out to them. Only when the poor are properly targeted can we know who they are in their patterns and how to respond to their poverty cases consistently and responsibly. And they include such categories as street hawkers, market children and women, pensioners, the unemployed and the retrenched workers taken as a whole. Most importantly the paper stressed that systemic ethnic and religious crisis known in the North must be a serious issue of attention because displacement and deprivation make poverty inevitable for all those implicated.

Overall, the paper shows that poverty is a chronic and debasing reality in Nigeria, and is equally controllable. But at the same time it requires strong political will, foresight and strategy to target and implement set out goals rather than playing a political rhetoric. Poverty, it emphasized, is a desperate social issue as it is among the poor in Nigeria and the challenge will continue until a reasonable plan and consistent action is laid down to respond to it both in the short and long run political and economic dynamic development curves. The poor, I conclude, seek to see reversing the progress of infectious poverty through culture and the merger of dependable strategy, space, and development, access to opportunity and geography of affect for the better in the decade to come.

As Prof. Fami Ajayi has crafted it in his posting on www.nigeriworld.com of September 7^th, 2009, apologizing to Nigerians as the USA did for enslaving Africans in the new world soon after Barack Obama became the first African American US president, will start healing the wounds of poverty that enslaves Nigerians under the watch and manipulations by their leaders. Yet such apology will need immediate transformation with effective programs on the ground to depict the seriousness of apologizing to better the lives of the vulnerable population. Prof. Femi Ajayi’s articulation runs deep as follows:

“apologizing to their fellow citizens that they had sentenced to everlasting hopeless life – is a must. The country has been plagued with unnecessary Marginalization Fever, Cosmetic Federal Character, Religious Fishing Baits, Unjust Dispensation of Resources, Women Craving, Social Injustices, Infrastructural Disengagement, Darkness all over God's own country, Public workers have been wage-wise caged like destitute with nothing productive coming from their daily responsibilities, and Water harbouring policies of some Nigerian governments in the country. In addition we also have Bank Grief, ASUU Malignancy, and PHCN Diahorea. Nigerian Governments would have to do more than apologizing to Nigerians for injustices to humanity.” (www.nigeriaworld.com, retrieved – Sept. 12, 2009).

Endnotes and References