Lagos — As Nigeria joins the rest of African countries to celebrate the year of the African Child for 2004, it is time to pause from bureaucratic feverishness and consider the depth of poverty among Nigerian children, and how the poverty of social policy aggravates and deepens poor outcomes for the children whose troubled tomorrow we celebrate. In spite of enormous natural wealth and a congenial geography, Nigerian maintains a place of dishonour among the poorest of nations. More tragically, Nigeria occupies the lowest rung in human capital amongst African poor nations. Poverty, especially amongst children, in Nigeria is a human tragedy. More so, in the context of oil and non- oil wealth generated from the Nigerian soil.

The proportion of children who live persistently in extremely poverty in Nigeria is very substantial. According to the estimate in the "Poverty Profile for Nigeria: 1985-1996", 64.7million people out of a national population estimate of 116million (as at 1996) were poor. The National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) document puts the current estimate of poverty in Nigeria as 70%.

This is a drastic increase from 38.5million in 1985. The number of people in extreme poverty has also increased from 13million in 1985 to 26million in 1996. The pattern here is that of exponential growth and shows clearly the spectre of continuing poverty. There are no exact statistics on the percentage of children who live in extreme and relative poverty. But if we look at the household indices of poverty we will have an estimate of how many children live in poverty. About 55.7 % of Nigerian households live in poverty, while 31% live in extreme poverty. Bearing in mind that there are more children than adults in a family and that poor households are likely to have more children it becomes clear that more than 80% of Nigerian children live in poverty, and about 60% in extreme poverty (that is, defined as those who live on less than a dollar a day).

Poverty eradication is politicised in Nigeria. The government, in order to qualify for loan forgiven has hurriedly constructed a Poverty Reduction Strategy Process, and instituted an Economic Policy Coordinating Committee (EPCC). Various poverty measures have been announced, including small grants to small to medium businesses. But the main pitfall of these policies, in spite of the well-known Nigerian corruption, is tokenism. The government is addressing chronic poverty with mere tokens, rhetoric and political cronyism.

The lack of focus and commitment in poverty alleviation is made clear by the resorting to paying legislators constituency allowances as part of the poverty alleviation grants. This is political patronage by other means. These legislators distribute such largesse to political clients who tickle down to captive voters. At the end, the slightly well-off gets better at the expense of the worse off. Of course, the net losers are children of poor parents who endure traumatised conditions and whose future is blighted by poor outcomes.

If we intend to attain economic and political development in Nigeria we must attend with seriousness to the task of reducing household poverty in Nigeria. The Nigerian political, social, and economic future is as bright as its human capital stock. And the average human capital stock depends on the quality of life of the many children from poor households. It's therefore necessary that government's economic and social policies should attack the structural bases of household poverty. Poverty alleviation should no longer be seen as an add-on to growth-based economic planning. A new paradigm shift is required: development as increasing the capabilities of the poor. Increasing the capabilities of the poor requires clear understanding of the causes and pathways of poverty among children.

Poverty among children is inherited not acquired. For a policy intervention to be effective it must proceed from an understanding of the interactive dynamic of how poverty passes from parents to children, and also the degree of impact on health, educational and social outcomes. Although in Nigeria, there are little longitudinal surveys. But we can use the data in the NEEDS document. In the year 2000, infant mortality stood at 77 per 100; close to 30 per cent of Nigerian children less than five years are underweight. Over 60 percent of Nigerian children are not immunised. Drop-off rate among Nigerian school age children is very high.

Children of poor parents are more likely to have poor outcomes, and are also more likely to remain poor for a long time. Some of these poor outcomes include physical health (poor or fair health, low birth weight, chronic asthma, diarrhoea etc); cognitive outcome (delays in development and learning disability); emotional and behavioural outcomes (aggression, depression, anxiety and social withdrawal).

Poverty in parent results in poor outcomes for children. But poverty may also be a proxy for some other factors like poor neighbourhood, lack of education, emotional stress and lack of social support. There are different models for looking at parent poverty and children outcomes. The main effects model looks at the relationship between a single risk, say low income, and outcomes. This is a simplistic model because it overlooks other mediating factors. The transactional model looks at how income poverty interacts with other variables like the state of neighbourhood, emotional states, social support and quality of schooling and genetics. Some of these variables are bundled together as socio-economic status (SES).

The importance of the transaction model to reducing children poverty in Nigeria is that it guides us on the most appropriate levels of policy intervention. Surveys in the US have established strong correlation between parental poverty and low cognitive ability and IQ score. Lack of access to quality education, resulting from parental poverty, leads to poverty traps for children, ten pregnancies, low employment and low wage, and perpetuation of poverty. This is more so in Nigeria where most of the poor households are in the rural areas with only 40 percent having access to safe water. In Nigeria, the pathways by which poverty travels to children are mutually reinforcing and affect children in rural households more than in urban areas.

What we know about the impact of poverty on the well being of children is that improving the socio-economic status of their parent improves their capacity to escape poverty. Since income poverty of parent results in poor outcomes for children it makes sense to focus on increasing the income of parents as a way of improving outcomes for children. In addition to increasing the cash income of poor parents, policy intervention should also be framed to target children directly. In Nigeria this is very important because of low resources for social spending.

Even among employable youths there is high unemployment. But education for poor children will be a good intervention in that it will increase the capacity of the children to exit poverty, especially if it is targeted at early childhood when relation between poverty and cognition is highest. This sort of measure should be coupled with cash transfers that enable parents live less with less stress, and provide adequate emotional and psychological support for children. My group, the Centre for Public Policy and Research, has partnered with Boston University on a research to show how a different types of legislative intervention premised on improving SES of parents can induce more school enrolment and limit child hawking. Both reports and a bill that grows from it are available for policy implementation.

Policy experts are considering two strategies to deal with children poverty. Some recommend cash payments to mother tied to school enrolment of children, and others recommend reduction in social spending in order to finance growth which will reduce poverty universally. The problem with growth strategy is that it sees poverty from a production rather than a distribution point of view. But economic growth will not necessarily address poverty in households since some of these poor parent lack skills and are far removed from the reach of meaningful economic activities. Reducing social spending while waiting for growth will further complicate poor outcomes for children in poor households.

The positive side of such policy is that it involves no additional cost in the short run and is likely to be gain political support. But in the long run it will prove expensive in terms of loss of human capital and cost of remedial measures to deal with aggravated poor outcomes for children.

The cash payment tied to school enrollment option is well targeted and deals with adverse incentives. It is a preventive measure that increases the resources of parents to provide good nurturance that can engender resilience against poverty. More income will enhance the health outcomes for children, although whether it interacts with other risks will be unclear. The policy will not create perverse incentive for welfare dependency because there are absolutely no welfare rolls in Nigeria, unlike in the US.

Most important feature of this policy is that it deals with the fact able to overcome path-dependency of children poverty: education. Tying cash payment to school enrollment overcomes another social vector of entrenched poverty among children: child labour. Most poor parents as a means of getting-by put their children into informal labour market and so doing foreclose their chance of breaking out of poverty. One downside of this policy is affordability.

There is also the problem of fiscal federalism. States would be reluctant to bear the administrative costs of establishing eligibility and administration of the payments except federal government funds them adequately. The federal- state partnership in this wise may raise additional political problems about how much state discretion is allowed on the scope and entitlement for support.