By Abiodun Komolafe
The title captures the interwovenness of economics and the social factors that define our well-being. It is a reality that any lender or partner must weigh when judging the true creditworthiness of a nation. This interrelationship must be laid bare; otherwise, what is fast becoming an intractable problem will never be solved with the systemic overhaul it demands.
History shows us that over the last century and a half, a “war on poverty,” to borrow the words of US President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, is, when properly handled, actually a blueprint for economic development. Leaders such as Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in his first term, as well as successive governments in India and many other developing countries, realized that a well-constructed war on poverty can become the trajectory, indeed the engine room, for sustained economic development.
Poverty is so pervasive that when it strikes, it strips away global aspirations and reduces people to an emotional simplicity that worships ignorance and celebrates mediocrity. For forty years, successive governments in India used anti-poverty programmes to build a sustainable economic base. Even leaving aside the success of the Green Revolution, Lula’s programmes in Brazil are profoundly instructive, being even more contemporaneous than the milestones of India’s past.
Nigeria’s problem is the poverty of our politics. We have more people than Brazil, yet we have less to show for it. While Brazil used its numbers to drive production and social dignity, we have squandered our demographic weight, descending from a land of potential to the world’s poverty capital. This political poverty views the nation as a populace dependent on handouts from a supposedly benevolent establishment. Such a mindset fails to grasp that a war against poverty is the engine room for sustainable development, the only way to truly achieve what the Action Group manifesto promised in 1951: “Life more abundant.”
Leaders who refused to be bound by the politics of poverty, men like Obafemi Awolowo, Lateef Jakande, Solomon Lar, and Michael Okpara, whom Sam Mbakwe closely emulated, used the state’s economic levers to build for the overwhelming majority. Visionary efforts like Awolowo’s Free Education could never have taken root if the mindset had been stuck on keeping the people dependent, as it is today. These initiatives, much like Jakande’s affordable housing schemes, were forged as weapons not merely to alleviate but to abolish poverty entirely. The legacy of such work will resonate for decades to come. The question is whether those now invoking Awolowo’s name for election purposes are emulating the late sage.
Poverty has become a hydra-headed monster, primarily because its weaponization helped trigger today’s insecurity plague. A neglected underclass was unleashed, a generation without the skills, training, or emotional stability to navigate modern society. A weak, ineffectual voice entered the public square with swagger and became the raw material for a factory producing horrors ranging from kidnappings and banditry to constant threats to public safety. The chickens have indeed come home to roost.
If, from the mid-1970s oil boom, Nigeria’s political establishment, both military and civilian, had implemented compulsory education up to age 16, complemented by mass affordable housing, modernized agriculture, and a foundation of basic industries, Nigeria would not be grappling with nearly 160 million people trapped in multidimensional poverty; that number might have been closer to 30 million. So far, so sad. We are left with the staggering reality that nearly half of our youth are either unemployed or underemployed.
Although Nigeria’s politics, as presently practised, lacks ideological foundation, our liberation must begin by freeing the minds of the political establishment from their fixation on weaponizing poverty as a tool of political calculus. We urge President Bola Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress to return to their 2023 manifesto pledge to build a society based on the Social Market economic model. This framework rebuilt post-war Germany from the ashes of 1945. It underpinned the United Kingdom’s economic regeneration between 1945 and 1951 and formed the bedrock of global political consensus for decades. At home, the same philosophy inspired the landmark achievements of Awolowo’s government, the transformative era of Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, and the few truly progressive chapters in Nigeria’s history.
As Nigeria prepares for a second term under President Tinubu, the administration must reevaluate the imperatives of the Social Market model. Where properly implemented, this proven framework has delivered “life more abundant,” shared prosperity, and an effective war against poverty, delivering a better life for the overwhelming majority of citizens and their families. It is a model worth pursuing.
Consider Vietnam. Emerging from the ashes of war, the country has achieved a modern economic miracle by instituting policies that deliver some of the lowest unit costs of electricity in the world. With this advantage, Vietnam now attracts record levels of investment and reportedly faces a “crisis of success,” lacking enough hotel beds for the influx of tourists and investors. Its annual exports recently surpassed 400 billion dollars. A Samsung manufacturing plant deliberately located there to capitalize on lower energy costs exported over 60 billion dollars’ worth of goods in a single year. Nigeria, with its vast potential, should have been in this position.
Once upon a time, countries like Malaysia trailed behind Nigeria. Today, Malaysia dominates the global palm oil industry, and its Gross Domestic Product dwarfs Nigeria’s in both structure and stability. This trajectory underscores the urgency of revisiting our economic model and returning to the visionary paths charted by Awolowo and Nkrumah.
While the models of Awolowo, Nkrumah, and leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru were built on giving people a hook so they could fish for themselves, today’s politics of poverty constructs a relationship of total dependence. Organized by anger and fleeting sparks, the political space has become unsafe and inaccessible. It traps citizens in a syndrome of unproductivity, feeding them pittances to sustain dependence rather than empowering them to thrive. Because this politics disregards capacity, talent, and competence, the citizen becomes a bystander instead of a participant.
Hollow slogans such as “Dìbò kóo sebè” (Vote and cook soup) and “Kó dúró l’ókè” (Let it stay at the top) were never the tools of true statesmen. After all, how many pots of soup can fifty thousand naira buy? Is that enough to mortgage one’s values for four years? To secure even that pittance, some must climb metaphorical mountains in search of miracles.
The absence of a functioning social contract explains why basic necessities like antivenoms are not as standard in our hospitals as paracetamol. In a country where justice is commodified, the strong, men with hardened hearts and closed ears, whose minds are closed by prejudice, will inevitably oppress the weak. And therein lies the tragedy.
