It is no more news to many Nigerians and non-Nigerians, that Nigeria has overtaken India (a country that is seven times Nigeria’s population) to be the new poverty capital of the world as approximately 87 million Nigerians now live in excruciating poverty that is almost half of the country’s population going to bed hungry, without decent shelter, clothing or voice for better life. According to the World Poverty Clock report developed by the Brookings Institution, the number of Nigerians in extreme poverty increases by six people every minute. While many may refute this figure to be an exaggeration, the fact remains that the level of poverty in Nigeria has escalated to a point where the very existence of the country and its people's safety is now threatened to the brink.
It is surprising that a country so blessed with both human and natural resources is struggling so hard to lose its citizens from the stronghold of poverty. Available statistics from the Universal Basic Education (UBEC) reports that over 13 million Nigerian children are out of school. According to the World Bank Data Atlas, as at 2015, the number of adult illiteracy in Nigeria stood at 41.3 million; in 1991 the figure was 24 million, growing at an average rate of 21.0% annually; almost at the same high with the level of her youth unemployment rate of 33.1%. This does not only confirm the huge spread of illiteracy across the county, the multiplicity of uneducated younger generation, but also raises an alarm over the country’s poor educational framework, and its failure to stimulate real economic productivity. It reemphasizes the need to rethink the planning, design and manner of implementation of the series of government and non-government interventions or social support programs aimed at improving the Nigerian people and boast her economic developmental chances.
While other countries have prioritized education (formal and vocational, regardless of age and time), Nigeria continues to gamble with and remain traditionally rigid about her educations system and development planning and methodology. Whether such negligence is deliberate or intentional by the successive government or the elite class, is a subject for another time. On the assumption that the government is serious about revamping her economy through human capital development, the focus should, therefore, be how do we as a people and government collectively build the capacity and resilience of our human capital, so as to break free from the epidemic of extreme poverty, how do we create opportunities for growth, sustainable development in the most practical and Nigerian specific manner? How do we get honest reliable data that speak and show the true picture of the problems and possibly provide local solutions to these problems? Successive governments in Nigeria at both local, states and federal levels have initiated and executed several intervention programs aimed at alleviating poverty since the 60s and 70s, regardless of these efforts, the income inequality across Nigeria continues to widen, as more of the population sink deeper into abject hunger poverty and its accompanying frustration and desperation.
In a race to escape poverty which seems to domicile comparatively more in rural communities, millions of agile youths are migrating to urban cities in a quest for a better life (or temporary stay before heading to the western world legally or illegally); thus adding pressure and stretching the already deficit urban structures, and facilities. First among these urban structural deficit is decent housing and a safe space for informal business growth. This explains the number of slums communities and shanties around urban city centres and suburban area; absent access to water, quality education and health care services, access to information, sanitation and drainage, recreational and skill acquisition centres and security. While these urban slums, through a lens of the government and politicians are seen as developmental eye-sores and the birthplace of all social vices; on the other lens, they are seen and used as political thugs and commodities to be bought during elections, given the population density in these areas.
The developmental vision of Nigeria which is seen Nigeria among the 20 biggest economies, provides no details of how it practically plans to mainstream and carter for this category of citizens in urban slums communities. History; record and interactions with government development planners and dwellers in these settlement (many of whom surprisingly are indigenes and the traditional custodians of the lands in these cities), suggest that the only plans and actions taken by successive government to deal with the urban slums and her people (who are also taxpaying citizens and electorates) is forcefully eviction; demolitions, unexplained fire accidents, unmatched compensation or resettlement of a few indigenes to unplanned area until remembered.
In Abuja, there are quite a number of these urban slum communities; squalor settlements with clustered houses, poor access to energy, no access to potable water, bad or no well-constructed drainages, poor sanitation and no access to toilets because of lack of space. Economic activities in these settlements are more for survival than for growth. Urban slums in Abuja either lay side by side huge metropolitan structures and estates or are walled off from plain sight.
While we know what has not worked in the past, government and development partners have dragged their feet in trying new approaches and methods in planning for sustainable and inclusive growth. Developmental projects in any part of Nigeria, like in these communities if ever remembered is given a one-size-fits-all approach; i.e Sinking of bore-holes in all communities, establishing a non-functional and poorly equipped Primary Health Care Centre, or under-staffed schools, erection of street lights that break-down after few weeks of commissioning; and commissioning of feeder roads to lead to nowhere. Unfortunately, such interventions are the conclusions drawn from data collected and models drawn by relevant government and non-governmental organizations, without first understanding the specific dynamism of each community or her population; to ascertain what the people consider problems and their local solutions to ensure acceptance or local legitimacy of arrived solution/interventions which ensure the sustainability and success of implemented interventions; as well as creativity, innovation, new relationships and collaboration across all stakeholders. In essence, project design either government development planning, resource allocation or program implementation for NGOs, must, first of all, acknowledge that communities, just like every individual differs from one to socially and infrastructurally; thus the designing of interventions and flow of information must take cognizance of this., and create local solutions on the basis, using processes that generate local dialogue and ideas in the most honest, sensitive, safe, and open manner.
HipCity Innovation Centre with support from Heinrich Boell Foundation (The German Green Foundation) devised a new approach and method of inclusive planning, development and growth by targeting urban poor Nigerians living in urban slums communities. As a pilot, HipCity Innovation Centre recruited and trained ten (10) young Nigerians on relationship building, ethnographic interview, participatory observation/sampling method, creating safe communication space, trust building and relational-based data/ evidence gathering. This entails living in the community, observing and reporting both quantitative and qualitative data; identifying entry point and commonalities while communicating with identified sample targets (persons/households) in the community; building friendship and trust without disclosing the objective of the exercise; but understanding by experiencing the living dynamism in the community, and problems faced by the people – Why there are there (in the slum)? How they cope with social and infrastructural challenges? How can they be better- dreams, aspiration, commitment and who can help support the needed change?
HipCity Innovation Centre team of researchers (otherwise call flat-mates or field monitors) moved in and lived with the people of Mabushi community (an urban slum settlement in Abuja for 6 weeks) without disturbing or altering the natural lifestyle of the people. The field observers bonded and established trust with the people and were able to galvanize the people into realizing that they have a right to better life; greater opportunities for possibility; a right to be treated with dignity as humans; right to demand healthy living and be heard as a stakeholder.
In commemoration of the Global day to #EndPoverty, HipCity Innovation Centre with its team still embedded in the community organized a 2 day Local Solution Lab exercise in the community; an exercise that created a safe listening space for each member of the community in attendant to air their views on the problems; infrastructurally and socially in the community, as well as drive the entire participants through a process where they all collectively agreed and made contributions on what the solutions should be, how it should be done and who should be the driver of the solutions.
The two days local solution Lab produced a charter of demand (a set of identified problems and solutions developed and owned by the community people), which will guide the people to task themselves individually and collectively before looking outside for help. Part of the solutions bordered on attitudinal change, collective investment in shared opportunities and interests, supporting local structures in dispensing their responsibilities. In terms of uplifting their economic and financial status, the people agreed to mobilize funds within themselves to start up businesses and also solicited that governments, international development partners, religious bodies and philanthropist should consider urban poor in their intervention plans and also make concessions/lower some of the requirements expected from some sections of urban dwellers in accessing some benefits from government such as loans, employment etc.
They further cited that, most of them and their children are secondary school certificate holders or secondary school drop-outs hence are not privy to some of the information circulated in the online space, and that most times accessing government and other development partners at their offices is such a herculean task as they can rarely make it past the gates.
It was clear from the local solution lab with the people of Mabushi community that if the target to eradicate poverty by the year 2030 is to be achieved, then inclusive growth and planning must mean that the people must be at the centre of the planning process and that their decisions must be respected and not trampled on. Another striking revelation from the solution lab was that interventions should never be a one-size-fits-all or generic but rather specific. Therefore social intervention programmes such as the N-Power, BOI and BOA interventions must consider and take into the perspective categorization of beneficiaries such that it reflects wholesomeness and participation by all. This process learning by experiencing; building relationship, listening and putting a face on data, may be expensive to operate, compared to the conventional data collection of shared questionnaire; however, what is more expensive is getting wrong, fragmented and generic data that not only lacks any human face but generates wrong solutions and projects that leave people in more poverty.
Putting the theme of this year’s #EndPoverty day “Coming together with those furthest behind to build an inclusive world of universal respect for human rights and dignity” into context for scrutiny, poverty cannot and will not be eradicated or reduced in a country like Nigeria if we continue in the generalizations of solutions. Suffice to say that poverty alleviation interventions must be decentralized, with each block having a tailored solution that feeds into a central strategy. This can only be done by listening and having a relationship with the real people.
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