Unemployment, Poverty & Crime (UPC)…reality check

Nigeria has a UPC problem. We know we have it, we talk about it just like everything else, but like everything Nigerian it is always “the Ostrich” that wins.

Perhaps you’ve not heard about the Ostrich tactic in Nigeria. This is the perennial ability of Nigerians (forget leaders, forget followers) to bury their heads in the sand and ensure a problem identified and widely acknowledged never get solved despite the solutions being so obvious a blind man can see them! It an endemic Nigerian condition.

This was the case with corruption or the need to adopt market based economic policy up until recently, and is the case with simple national action items like diversification of the economy away from oil, devolution and fiscal federalism, reforming the civil service that has become an octopus, reduction of the cost of governance, cleaning up the Niger Delta, removal of immunity for certain categories of public officers etc. We can go on and on…we are a nation of Ostriches.

Speaking about UPC, it is the bane of the hellish existence of the average Nigeria. UPC is why the average lifespan of the Nigerian is nothing to write home about. Even if you escape the jaws of death in Nigeria by virtue of your economic class (either by dint of hard work, escaping abroad or thievery), you will still bear the brunt of hellish existence of burying friends, relatives and colleagues whom otherwise should still have a productive life if not for UPC. You’re living, but lonely — sad, because while you may have escaped the claws of UPC for a moment it lurks just around the corner as that road accident, that contaminated food that lands on your table due to smuggling, or that kidnapper laying wait for you. After all, this is Nigeria!

UPC did not just happen to us. We brought it on ourselves.

UPC is very basic. Nigeria has a chronic unemployment problem, which is the bedrock of its chronic poverty and crime issues. Unemployment in Nigeria is said (as at 2011- see chart below) to plague 16 million people. Adjusting for “popuflation”, that is 20 million adults of 75 million today, and that is assuming the maid, maiguard, herdsman, gofers, political hangers on and road side vendors are counted in the army of employed. If we were to add the verb, “gainfully” behind employed, then we may as well be looking at 30 to 40 million unemployed Nigerians.

What this means in real terms, are 30 million Nigerians in poverty and who cannot fend for their families which is an average size of 4, yielding the all important figures of 120 million households in desperate poverty that you see those World Bank and associated aid agencies in the “I told you so” industry bandy about.

When you can’t fend for your family, when you can’t feed your children or look a wife in the face or an aged parent in the eye for basic needs few things will happen alone or in combination as listed below:

• You can throw your hands up and exhibit signs of depression and perhaps if lucky even leave your fate to an invisible Almighty, which explains the booming spiritual industry in Nigeria. Poverty causes despondency and borderline mental disease; and leads to booming scam industry all over Nigeria- more on that later.
• Even if you have grit and strong mental resistance, you will hit the ground battling endemic poverty. You will over work yourself, you will expose your self to unnecessary risk including dangerous road and water travel. Poverty causes sickness and accidents, and resultant low life expectancy.
• You will be confronted with the usual diseases and sicknesses that abound in tropical environment in addition those caused as explained above due to your stressed life, and will be presented with treating empirically with drugs over the counter that may amount to death sentence or going to the nearby mortuary called hospital, either way you go- it is a virtual death sentence. Poverty causes death.
• You will confront daily temptations of taking beyond what you earn in daily living, and your choice is to continue to be trampled upon by your neighbor or to game the system and take more than the system will reward you with. This is called corruption, you call it survival. Poverty causes corruption and crimes; and the consequent lack of good sleep for the perpetuator and cycle of poverty and crimes for the victims.
• If you’re one of the dare devils who wouldn’t take matters passively, the crime you will commit won’t be the passive corruption one either. You will find an armed robbery gang, engage in kidnapping, smuggling, ritual killings, pipeline vandalization, assassination, child trafficking, drug peddling and prostitution among many others. After all, this is the fastest means to gainful employment in this clime. Ultimately you become a merchant of death, distributing untimely death certificates as you please especially to the few on the top doing well. Poverty leads to a systemic death trap.

Ultimately it is obvious that UPC does no one good. The poor suffer, and the rich cry. Hundreds of bullion vans and Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs) won’t save the rich when UPC draws its cloak of death on them or their relatives, whom being far removed is definitely within reach of its claws. UPC kills Nigerians every day, and ensures we have a paltry life expectancy of less than fifty years old.

In Nigeria, if you make 60 years you’ve achieved a resounding lifespan record. Diseases that don’t kill in other countries take out the middle aged Nigeria, having been subjected to the stress of living under poverty and in an environment ill prepared (no hospital, no ambulance, no infrastructure) to respond to the challenges of MAD (Middle Aged Diseases) ensures they virtually live one sickness away from dying at their prime.

UPC did not just happen to us. We brought it on ourselves. There are structural solutions to UPC, but there are immediate ones which are obvious but again we refuse to do them.

Good governance, reformed and efficient public service that should take no more than 25% of our budget to operate- freeing the balance for capital projects, massive infrastructural build starting with our schools and clinics to ensure the biggest bang for our buck in human development index and massive employment generation, creativity in attracting private finance to energy, transportation and communication infrastructure which are more financeable and form the bedrock of an innovative new economy, and lastly rule of law and policy consistency that ensures others take us seriously when it comes to economic matters necessary for growth and job creation.

To stop playing Ostrich, we must recognize that the root of our hellish and brutish existence as a nation is endemic unemployment: which breeds poverty and crime with the coterie of illness, bodily harm and death that comes with it. Interestingly, our problem can also be our strength. With a young population (occasioned by low life expectancy), we have cheap and able labour that can be engaged to rebuild the country starting from our schools and clinics, ensuring life is better for the lowly of the lows. Great education spurs innovation, and the human investment will be preserved by a reformed healthcare system. After these, all others can follow or run parallel, after all we are entrepreneurial people.

When shall we stop killing ourselves with UPC? When we get a Public Works Program so we can get 20 million people back to work!