The Narrative Of The Truly Poor
On my way to work every morning, I am faced with a reality quite distant from the world of twitter, Facebook, television talks-shows and media-hugging symposia. At the bus stop near my house, a group of young men, all in their twenties, are alert, awaiting arriving buses for alighting passengers. On sighting a halting bus, they sprint, with all energy, seeking exclusive claim over the loads in the boot.
Usually, they want to be able to grab bags of onions, baskets of tomatoes, bundles of vegetables, bags of rice or beans, tubers of yam, etc. But there’s no major market around, which means a considerable shortage of the goods they are out to carry. These are the wheel-barrow boys whose only means of livelihood is the luck to, first, overpower competing hands and lay claim to more of the loads, and secondly, be blessed with a client who wouldn’t want to squeeze out enormous profits from the transaction by paying too little. These young men are supposed to be part of our enormous human capital through whom we can drive growth and development. But I’ll be damned if anybody knows such people are living.
In climes where the capacity of the educated man to change the world is recognized, these boys should be in college. They should not be wasting away like they are.
I once told a story of the Saturday morning an aboki cobbler- the ones clutching whirring little boxes and plastic baskets – stopped me on my way to the ATM. He spoke in Hausa, a language I do not understand. On observing I didn’t know what he was saying, he took to gesticulation, finally passing the message across. He was hungry, and needed money for feeding. It struck me for the first time that I had not contracted an aboki to shine my shoe in over three years. That realization opened up further realities to me: even my friends polish their own shoes these days. It was possible the guy hadn’t tasted food since the previous night. How would he if he hadn’t made any sale? And if the sales didn’t come in considerable volume, how much would be available to him for feeding?
I was grateful that the last note on me could buy him a plate of food. I handed it and moved, depressed at my own realization that I’d never given a thought to these ones before.
Have we asked ourselves how a man survives on a tray of candies, biscuits and cigarettes as his only wares? The aboki whose means of livelihood is contained in a tray shops in the same market the rest of us shop, at least, for such basic things as food stuff.
Let’s go to Eko bridge. That is where our shame is laid bare. Kids of primary and secondary school age eke out a living by hawking everything thinkable in traffic. As they meander through horns-honking vehicles, they are on the look-out for when KAI – Kick Against Indiscipline – officials are coming to swoop in on them. On many occasions you see the kids racing, their wares on their heads, for safety, of self and goods. The unlucky ones sometimes get caught, and they deploy the little cash they have for bribing the KAI officials. It’s a jungle out there, and the lion has no milk of mercy for the rest in the wild.
Isn’t it an irony that some publicly quoted companies with highly educated staff as decision makers rely on illiterate boys running to and fro vehicles in traffic for their turnover and profits? From yoghurt to snacks, the traffic, whether it’s on a sunny or rainy day, is the market of the urban poor.
I once wrote the story of a Petroleum Engineering graduate who works as a labourer where they are building a house. He made a Second Class Upper in Engineering, so it’s not like he’s one of those so-called “unemployable” graduates. The last time I checked on him, even after the story I published attracted interests from good-spirited people, he is still unemployed.
Is anybody seeing the need for social reengineering of Nigeria? It doesn’t appear so.
But those who truly seek change must see this challenge as it is: Millions here are poor, and those who impoverish them are happy. This explains why a man who takes N600 million from a country with 112 million wretched citizens kicked against the payment of stipends of N20,000 to unemployed graduates. And for the sake of emphasis – because I have said this many times in the past – that character, David Mark, head of Nigeria’s do-nothing-eat-everything legislature, takes from Nigeria in one year what will pay a United States president for ten years! And the United States has payment benefits for the unemployed.
But the logic is simple: if there’s enough money to pay unemployed graduates, there’ll be much pressure on the N600 million per annum for Mark, and then the at least N160 million for each of the rest legislators. There also won’t be enough to pay for inflated contracts executed by friends and fronts of those in government. In denying the people life, the rulers bloom.
It’s crazy here.
I am a supporter of payment of a certain amount to unemployed graduates. It places a burden of responsibility on the government. Once you subject the government to such payments, then the creation of jobs, or the provision of the enabling environment for job creation, becomes an urgency in government circles.
Arguing that government cannot do it is lacking in substance, because, the real challenge is that we have refused to pay our politicians the sort of remuneration commensurate with our reality. If people in government earn the way they should, there’ll be enough to cater for the unemployed graduate. And what on earth is N20,000 for a graduate per month, anyway? Why should a governor be given over N6 billion in a year under the head of ‘security vote’ in a country that has no state police? From our excessive wastes that convert governors and legislators to billionaires, we can take care of the real poor, and the unemployed.
We therefore need a way to elevate the status of the cobbler, the barrow boy, the traffic-hustler and the unemployed graduate beyond that realm where N5000 election bribe will matter to him. How do we do that? Reduce poverty. Who has all it takes to do it? The government or the billionaire entrepreneurs. Will they want to do it? No. Where then do we go from here?
The conversation continues…
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