Those who run the affairs of nation have got a great job. It is a privileged to be one of those fashioning out the way forward for one’s country. People whose job is simply to ensure that the nation’s resources are not only efficiently utilised but equitably distributed. The perennial contest between efficiency and equity in resource utilisation and the need to ensure they are properly balances is one of the greatest challenges facing public administration. Public policy design and implementation is a fascinating job indeed; but at the same time, a very difficult one. Leaders ought to enjoy the full support and sympathy of their countrymen, because they spend their days seeking out ways and means of improving the welfare of the people.
Unfortunately, most leaders don’t enjoy that support because the socioeconomic condition of their people do not seem to justify their toil. Poverty and inequality get worse as governments announce measures to tackle them. And this is the reality of today’s leaders in Africa’s biggest economy and the most populous black nation. There is little or no connection between the leaders and those they lead; just as there is no connection between the growth of the economy (when it grows) and the living conditions of the people.
What is not in doubt is that as the economy progresses, the rich took it all, while the poor regressed further behind. This has amplified the trust deficit handing over the leaders, and between the leaders and their people. Today, what the world feared most is happening – a situation where more and more people are resorting to self-help as the best way to solve almost all their problems. And this is not a Nigerian phenomenon. It is a worldwide crisis, even if Nigeria, as in many things negative, seems to epitomise this problem.
In 2014, the Holy Father, Pope Francis, said something very significant in his message to those meeting to discuss the world economy. It was during the World Economic Forum (WEF) that took place in Davos. He said, “I ask you to ensure that humanity is served by wealth and not ruled by it”. The Pope was verbalising his concern for the growing disparity in the access to world resources between the rich and the poor, and the growing emphasis of material acquisition as against the shared humanity of mankind. The holy Father’s message came at the time the world was jolted by a report on the worsening state of global inequality and misery by Oxfam, an international confederation of several organisations operating in over 94 countries searching for solutions to poverty and social injustice.
The Oxfam report indicated that 85 richest people in the world owned as much wealth as half of humanity’s poorest people numbering over 3.5 billion. That report truly conforms with others that indicate that over the last ten years, inequality in the world has more than doubled. As if the bad new broken to the leaders at Davos in 2014 did not sink in, they came back in 2016 to continue their discussions of the affairs of humanity, with little or not improved data. They were again confronted with the bad news on world inequality.
This time however, the news was even worse. They were informed that one percent of the world now owns more wealth than the rest of the people in the world. That meeting rose without much more than platitudes on inequality and poverty reduction.
Back home in Nigeria, the storm was still rising on the unimpactful economic growth the nation had witnessed over the years, which at a point averaged over 7 percent per annum; how millionaires without visible investments were being minted in the corridors of political power, while the masses groaned under poverty. Every one ought to know that extreme poverty is a recipe for disaster anywhere in the world. The consequences are too negative to contemplate. There is already a rising wave of tension all over the country, which continues to build up as more and more people find it difficult to feed themselves. However, much has not been achieved in terms of job creation. Social justice still shimmers in the distance as fewer and fewer people have access to the limited job opportunities.
Economic empowerment begins with distributional equity; not just in the allocation of financial resources but also in economic opportunities. By this concept is meant justice in the way the so-called national cake is shared
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A winner-takes-all economy has but a little time before the days of anarchy arrive. The history of the world is replete with instances of nations that paid dearly because the elite wrongly thought that they could focus on themselves alone. All the efforts we make, governments, groups and individuals, including those of this column, to promote entrepreneurship and reduce poverty, are all in the bid to avert the looming danger. Governments exist to protect the people from one another and all forms of oppression. This protection is guaranteed by the existence of a functional judiciary, effective law enforcement and security agencies, equal opportunities and freedom from discrimination.
Nigeria has a major growth problem. It has been recording snail-paced growth over the past few years as the growth rate of the economy lags behind population growth rate. But that is not the major problem, after all we were all witnesses to years of massive growth that did not benefit the bulk of the people. There is no doubt that government has realised this and begun to take measures to improve things. This is why there are so many financing programmes (some say they are too many with unrealistic targets and conditions), targeting the poor.
Unfortunately, due to many rigidities, including corruption, nepotism and incompetence, these efforts are yielding suboptimal results. Government, in a bid to reduce cost of governance, recently took measures to reduce travelling expenses of public officers, a move that is significant more in its symbolism than quantum of savings. Evidently, a lot more needs to be done to convince Nigerians that the source of the well-acknowledged high cost of governance in the country are about to be capped.
Economic empowerment begins with distributional equity; not just in the allocation of financial resources but also in economic opportunities. By this concept is meant justice in the way the so-called national cake is shared. This is even more important in places where the sharing of national cakes takes precedence over the baking of the cake.
This piece is largely excerpted from my book, “Leading Essays on Microfinance” to be publicly presented on November 8, 2019 at NIIA.
EMEKA OSUJI
