|
"Poverty"
Nigeria Greatest Diseases
By Gbenga olagunju -
Nigeria
poverty is the world
deadleist diseases, it wields its
desturctive
influence at every stage of
human life, and for most of its
victims the
only escape is an early
grave. Poverty provides that too! while
life
expectancy is increasing in
most developed countries, it is
actually
shrinking in some of the
poorest. for many million of people for
whom
survival is a daily battle
the prospect of a longer life may seem
more
like punishment than a prize.
Hiroshi Nakajima-WHO/ PAI.
The view express above is s
quote from Hiroshi Nakajima, A one
time
director of world health
orgnaization (WHO) on poverty allevation
initiative
The simple meaning of
democracy could just be say as service to
people
or humanity and kindness to
our enviroment. But what we see in
today
politics is suffering/
negelect to our people from those who are
to
serve them better. Instead
they often run after accusation of
more
wealth in neglect of
social/econmic service to those who elected
them
into power/political offices.
There is a clear and
acknowlegde need for a more reasonable
equitable
distribution of developmental
gains, both between individuals as
well as
between areas. It is self
evident to sevral thousands of people
in
nigeria in particular who
suffer from malnutrition, poor
education ,ill-
housing, high cost of health
facilities and high rate of
unemployment.
The issue is not simply
economic but social and cultural gaps
must be
bridged so as to allow all
citizens to have or maintain a
reasonable
standard of living. This deos
not mean a redistribution of wealth
but
the concermed or effort
should be towards meaningful employment
opportunities for adult and
appropriate socal service and
facilities for
all. Furthermore it is
expeted that not only the healthy
workforce that
is, the unemploy youth that
poverty allevation programme should
envolve
but so also the sick and
infirm, children and the elderly, infact
poverty allevation programme
should also include all those who
can not
be expected to play a full
and actives role in the development of
our
nation for a fault which is
not theirs.
However one strategic
step to assit the poor is by increasing
accesibility to productive
assets, particularly fianacial
resources. for
the poor, The avialability of
finacial resources is an important
step
in the accumulation of
capital, so that prodution can be increase
and
surpus of income created in
order to achive grater capital
accumulation.
But the irrony of the whole
issue is that creadit loan are not
often
easy to come by for the rual
poor for lack of qolataral or
cubersome
service from the bank or
fianacial institetion and if at all,
It`s often
go to wrong hand who will not
use it for the purpose it meant
for.
The socail/ecnomic and
cultural gaps is too wide in nigeria here
to the
extent that the rich has
contiue to be rich while the poor
enjoying
factually nothing in term of
socail amenities,yet we talk of
divident of
democracy, the question here
now is that to whom is the benifit
of
democratic divident?
The irrony of the whole case
is where our people are surffering
in
abject poverty and hunger in
the mist of plenty there is still a
purpular saying that nigeria
is bless with both human and
marterials
resourceses, Infact nigeria
is said to be following with milk
and honney.
But it is very rediculus that
we are in an era of what i would
call
'the food bug' that is huger
have replace food era we use to
have in
nigeria
in those days.Today an average nigerian can
no longer
boast of
three good balance diet,
instead what we see is hunger in most
faces, yet
the kind of food we are use
to are such that our weather/ climate
suits
their growth and even those
which are foreign and which we have
been
introduced into our diet have
pocket of areas where they can be
produced
.
Honestly, at this
present rate of our demographic grown,
we need to
give a serious thought to how
we can safe our people from diening
from
hunger by providing
employment and adequate job security to our
people.
One may tend here to suggest
therefore that some of the key
elements toward
these goal could be human
resources development',
decentralization/ more
transparent programme
management sincerity of purpose by
reducing high
rate/high ranks of curuption
at every level. Programme that have
no direct
links/benefit to majority of
our people at large should be giving
less
piority and above all greater
emphasis on' botton-up' planning/
community perticpation and
empowerment of the poor could be our
best-bet.
--
_
|
The
African Star
