Muyibi Amoda
9 May 2008
Lagos — Nigeria and all of the Gulf of Guinea Societies are Poverty Endemic Societies (PES). PES are societies in which more than 5 percent are suffering from extreme poverty.
"The World Bank has long used a complicated statistical standard - income of $1 per day per person, measured as purchasing power parity - to determine the numbers of extreme poor around the world. Another World Bank category, income between $1 per day and $2 per day, can be used to measure moderate poverty. These measures feature prominently in public policy circles, and most recently were estimated by World Bank economists Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion.
They estimated that roughly 1.1billion people were living in extreme poverty in 2001, down from 1.5 billion in 1981. Figure 1a shows the distribution of the world's extreme poor by region. Each bar signifies the number of poor in the region, with the first bar indicating the number in 1981, the second bar in 2001.
Gulf of Guinea
The overwhelming share of the world's extreme poor, 93 per cent in 2001, live in three regions, East Asia, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Since 1981, the number of extreme poor have risen in Sub-Saharan Africa, but have fallen in East Asia and South Asia. Figure 1b repeats the same measurement, but now shows the proportion of the regions population in extreme poverty, rather than the absolute number.
Almost half of Africa's population is deemed to live in extreme poverty, and that proportion has risen slightly over the period. The proportion of the extreme poor in East Asia has plummeted, from 58 per cent in 1981 to 15 per cent in 2001, in South Asia the progress has also been marked, although slightly less dramatically, from 52 percent to 31 percent.
Latin America extreme poverty rate is around 10 percent, and relatively stuck; Eastern Europe's rose from a negligible level in 1981 to around 4 percent in 2001, the result of the upheavals of communist collapse and economic transition to a market economy. Figures 2a and 2b show the calculations for the moderate poor, those living between $1 and $2 per day.
East Asia, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa continue to dominate the picture, with 87 percent of the world's 1.6 billion moderately poor. The numbers of moderate poor in East Asia and South Asia have actually risen as the poorest households have improved their circumstances from poverty to moderate poor poverty.
Some 15 percent of Latin Americas live in moderate poverty, a rate that has been fairly constant since 1981. Map 1 gives as yet another perspective on these data, on a country-by-country basis. Each country is shaded according to the proportion of the population living in extreme poverty and moderate poverty.
A country as a whole is deemed to suffer from extreme poverty if the proportion of the population in extreme poverty is at least 25 percent of the total. A country is categorized as suffering from moderate poverty if it is not in extreme poverty, but at least 25 percent of the households are extremely poor or moderately poor, that is living under $2 per day.
Most of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa are in extreme poverty (and even more would be in this category but for lack of reliable data), as are countries of South Asia, East Asia and Latin America including many countries in moderate poverty but also many that have risen beyond moderate poverty in recent decades" (Jeffrey Sachs - The End of Poverty, pp20-22).
These figures enable us not only to map the distribution of the poor region by region but also to construct the stratification of the poor within each region and countries in each region. A country's population can be stratified as follows: Percentage that are Affluent; Percentage that are Upper Middle Class; Percentage that are Lower Middle Class; Percentage that are Moderately Poor - The Working Poor; Percentage that are Extremely Poor - The Indigent Poor.
The change in distribution of population along this ladder is also describable. In the recent global economic history, Africa continues to be an extreme poverty continent constituted of extreme poverty countries. Jeffrey Sachs book from which the quotation is taken is titled The End of Poverty: How we can make Happen in our Lifetime".
The book catalogues the history of the economic development of regions and countries, mapping progress of populations grasping for the lower rungs of the Economic Development Ladder and the chronicle of their progress along the strata of Economic Development. Africa in general and the Gulf of Guinea Countries in particular are marked by an Elite_Mass income distribution with more than 50 percent of the masses being constituted of the extremely poor.
The challenge of the Niger Delta is thus two_fold; that of ending poverty in our life time in the Niger Delta; that of ending poverty in Nigeria in our life time through the Niger Delta.
These two tasks must be addressed by GGESS and it must get it right in our life time in the Niger Delta. The hope lies in the facts of change in the pattern of economic stratification of countries and regions.
The challenge lies in the fact that neither nation building economic development nor constitutionalist democratic empowerment of the Gulf of Guinea Citizenry are possible without an effective confrontation of the Poverty Development Constraints. In this lies the importance and significance of Nigeria getting it right through the Niger Delta GGESS Programs and Initiatives.
GGESS must therefore contextualize its operation in the politics of its Niger Deltas in general and in this its pioneer instance in the Nigerian Federal Government Niger Delta. The politics in Nigeria is an enterprise of three types or categories of politicians, namely: Electoral Party Politicians; State Making Politicians and; Country Creation Politicians.
Nigerian Politics is also contextualizes by Global Resource Politics in Nigeria. A particular structure of the interactive nature of this politics is what is evident in this Oil and Gas GGESS Initiative.
Federal Government and the State Governments of the Niger Delta are units of the Nigerian Federation whose federalism is both contextualized and determined by the course of partisan pursuit of electoral, state making and country formation interests.
Currently Electoral Politics in Nigeria is the platform upon which state making and country formation disputes are resolved. Nigeria is a society where the state securing governments is presently a partisan project and the country to be fashioned out of provinces of empire is also a partisanly pursued objective of politicians.
The issues of security conflicts are thus primarily those of the state and country making politicians. This is presently the case in Nigeria, where all shades of politicians have agreed to contest for their objectives through the electoral process. The stability and durability of this arrangement cannot however be taken for granted. Confidence in elections and their outcome is presently a case by case issue in each country.
As is evident in the Pakistan and Kenyan Elections, stakeholders' confidence in elections is fragile and easily and quickly withdrawn. The results of such loss of confidence are reported in the news on daily basis. Their costs argue for systematic and sustained attention and investments in statecraft designs that can be a bipartisanly supported mechanism by the Gulf of Guinea Politicians and Nigeria's Politicians in particular.
The need for these comments arises out of the news report on GGESS. The journalist faithfully summarized the details on GGESS as was presented by the Nigerian Government. Inspite of the fact that GGESS is a national security matter, analysis of the subject reported was scanty.
In a subject matter where paranoia bred of minimal appreciation of public domain national security reportage can quickly develop to capsize the boat, there is need for capacity to be developed for appreciating and reporting on national security matters, especially in contexts of state making and country redefinition politics.
Getting GGESS right in the Niger Delta
It is of critical importance that Nigeria in GGESS and its partners, governmental and developmental get it right with GGESS. First it must be appreciated why politics must be factored into GGESS as an expertise as well as a context of GGESS. Politics can be an avocation and a vocation. This is the case with Nigeria's external partners, especially the US and the UK.
In Nigeria politics is primarily a vocation - it is a profession. Because it is so politicians have an expertise that is to be contributed in GGESS kind of projects and this most importantly in the Gulf of Guinea energy rich region.
More importantly in the design of GGESS is the necessity to take the political as context. But what politics? The politics of state building and country building. Why? Because the principal agency dependent upon by Governments in Nigeria in the resolution of Niger Delta Issues is the Military.
NNPC and EFCC have a police role to play at this high stake security politics of the Niger Delta, and we all know that the police comes in at the pacification stage, when the opposing militaries have been decisively defeated.
This is why the political context is of strategic importance. The Military's role in the politics of Nigeria is not the same as those of the Military of the partnering governments. The Military in Nigeria features in electoral, state making and country formation politics.
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