POVERTY IN NIGERIA, CAUSES AND DIMENSIONS

POVERTY IN NIGERIA, CAUSES AND DIMENSIONS

According to Egwu (2002), poverty in Nigeria is a huge challenge. It exist in both relative, absolute and subjective form. Ideally there is a fixed level, usually known as the poverty line, below which poverty began and above which it tends. This concept is known as absolute poverty. While relative poverty are standard which are relative to the particular time and place. However, subjective poverty refers to whether or not an individual or group fee feel they are poor

More so, several scholars have attempted to operationalize poverty in which it can be measured. According to Remi M. (2007), poverty may be understood as an aspect of unequal social status and inequitable social relationship, experience as exclusion, dependency and diminished capacity to participate or to develop meaningful connections with other people in the society. He went further to say, poverty cannot deprivation of the means of subsistence. The manifestations of poverty includes inadequate distribution of resources, lack of access to basic social services like education and health care, food scarcity, low life expectancy and lack of participation in decision making process. The social aspect of poverty may include lack of access to information education, health care and political power.

According to James O. (2007), he substantiate on United Nations reports of 2002 that extreme poverty implies living on less than one US dollars ($1) per day and moderate poverty as living on less than two US dollars ($2) a day. Nigerian has a high unemployment rate, so poverty in Nigeria include deprivation of common necessities that determine the quality of life, lack of food, clothing, shelter and safety drinking water, and may also include the deprivation of opportunities to learn and to obtain better employment.

Therefore, poverty in Nigeria also have specific urban and rural manifestation. The depth of poverty in Nigeria is well recognized as it is known that two-third (2/3) of Nigeria live below the globally accepted poverty line as reported by World Bank. Nigeria poverty dramatized the paradox of the African reality where most of the citizens of a resources endowed countries are subjected to all mannered of materials and non materials deprivations.

To Egwu and Omale (2007), without covering the arbitrary intellectual space of defining poverty, it is important to suggest that there are several index used in the measurement of poverty. Those includes human poverty index, human development index, gender development index looks at related issues such as life expectance, education, material acquisition and infant mortality rate. While human poverty index concentrates on calculating deprivation in terms of ‘’connectivity’’ (survival rates) ‘’knowledge’’ (rate of literacy)’’ access to basic services (standard of living).

Furthermore, the endemic poverty is widely shared across the six (6) geopolitical zones in Nigeria for instance, there is a death of medical personnel on the ratio of doctors to populations, while the national average is one (1) doctor to 40,000 people, the ratio in the Niger Delta is a Doctor to 232,000 people in the rural areas. Meanwhile, only 27% of the Niger Delta people have access to clean drinking water, while 305 have access to electricity, 6% have access to telephone and 7% have never used telephone. However, this situation confirms the saying that ‘’poverty anywhere constitute a danger to prosperity any where’’.

According to Townsend P. (2004), in Tinuke (2012), poverty is seen in terms of per capital income, per capital energy consumption, strategy staples as a percentage of calories consumed, life expectancy, instant mortality and the number of inhabitants per physician.

Poverty is a macro problem. The causes are so wide as they are deep also. The World Development Report (2002/2001) observed that some of key reason why people from most part of the world are poor and remain poor includes the following political instability natural disaster, corruption, socio-economic disparities and prejudice, lack of access to education, lack of infrastructural facilities, acute condition like welfare agricultural cycle, subsistence farming and productions, draught and flooding, hurricane and environmental forces.

To Eguw (2007), these include the causes of poverty in Kogi State.
i. Unemployment
ii. Under employment
iii. Death of break-winner in a family
iv. Polygamous family
v. Corruption and leadership problem in Kogi State.

He equally said, poverty in Nigeria has a specific gender dimension in the sense that the incidence of poverty are high among women than men.

This reality familiarizing of poverty is explained by this relative lack of access to capital and other means of production including land. The implication of this is that, any effort aims at challenging poverty must take into account of gender dimension. Other dimension of poverty includes low nutritional status, low level of education, and decline in spending on social activities, high percentage of household income spent on food and low life expectancy.