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| Pres. Muhammadu Buhari. |
The
recent report by the United Nations Development Programme, published on July
11, 2019, which established that over 98 million Nigerians are living in
multidimensional poverty, is a frightening corroboration that poverty has
become the fastest growing venture in Nigeria over the last four years.
There is an urgent and compelling need
for institutions of the Nigerian state to understand that it is an appalling
dereliction of duty to stand idly by and allow misery multiply in the populace.
This is no longer a grassroots problem.
The failure of our economy over the last four years affects everyone from top
to bottom. Four years ago, Aliko Dangote, Nigeria's richest man, was worth $25
billion. However, his net worth in 2019 is less than half that. He joins
thousands of industrialists whose wealth and their ability to produce, has
eroded in recent years, and continue to do so.
With the National Bureau of Statistics
reporting a net job loss of over 6 million since 2015, we see that if
industrialists have their wealth eroding, it affects their ability to create
opportunities, which means that the trickle-down effect gradually dries.
The greatest national security threat
Nigeria faces in 2019 is not Boko Haram/ISWAP or bandits. It is that we have
created the largest wave of poverty in human history. And the world is
noticing, hence Foreign Direct Investment is shifting from Nigeria to Ghana,
making Ghana the top recipient of FDI in West Africa in the last year.
And in the wake of this report by the
UNDP, we are greeted with nonchalance by those who led us into this crisis. It
is as though they think that as long as they and their families are not amongst
those 98 million extremely poor Nigerians, things can carry on as before.
But that cannot be allowed to be the
case. Those who have the ability, including the Council of State, all former
leaders, elder-statesmen, and especially the other arms of government, must
begin to collaborate for solutions, before the number increases from 98
million, to all 198 million Nigerians.
We must remember that we are
stakeholders in the Nigerian project. Stakeholders who must speak up for those
98 million people who are losing their voices to poverty.
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