Poverty in the north: Between mentality and laziness

…also published in Daily Trust

As a topic, poverty in northern Nigeria has been sufficiently addressed in exhaustive intellectual works by economists and other intellectuals who have proffered short, medium and long-term solution proposals. Yet, grinding poverty remains particularly endemic in the region despite being massively blessed with economic potential enormous enough to accommodate individuals’ entrepreneurial ambitions and corporate wealth creating enterprises. 

This is also despite the fact that the average northerner is inherently energetic in pursuit of his livelihood, contrary to the unfounded assumption that he is lazy. After all, no one can rightly ascribe laziness to a social stratum that dominates the informal sector of petty but physical energy-intensive yet less rewarding occupations in the country. This is even though being energetic doesn’t necessarily mean being hardworking, because while the former doesn’t necessarily involve intelligence, the latter does necessarily do. And this is exactly where the underlying challenge lies when it comes to addressing the vicious circle of persistent poverty and culture of ineptitude in the region.

It’s therefore actually a question of being intelligent, ambitious and entrepreneurially creative enough in pursuit of livelihood, which the average northerner is admittedly not. For instance, and at the risk of sounding elitist and certainly without contempt for any legitimate occupation, the average northerner toiling as, say, ‘dan-dako, maigadi, shushaina or mai yankan farce roaming the metropolis of, say, Port Harcourt, Kano, Lagos or Abuja, had probably abandoned his inherited farmland in his village, yet even after migrating to urban areas and being too unintelligent to explore his potential to pursue better and sustainable livelihood, he ended up stuck in that dilemma with no apparent plan to improve his situation by, say, acquiring skills that require apprenticeship to undertake.

Anyway, against the backdrop of the absence of any intellectual attempt (as far as I know) to trace and interpret the underlying dynamics behind this peculiar mentality, the simplistic assertion associating it with laziness persists. However, I for one don’t see it that way, not because I share the same ethno-cultural background with the largest segment of the social stratum concerned, but because I believe this mentality might not be unconnected with a mistaken understanding of some Islamic religious texts. To explain why, it’s pertinent to point out that, Islam maintains some spiritual consolations for the poor to comfort and reassure them that being poor doesn’t actually make them inferior to anybody; and that they shouldn’t feel that way either as they will also be appropriately compensated in the Hereafter.  

However, apparently, at some point in the past, these spiritual consolations appeared to have been widely mistaken for glorification of poverty and vilification of affluence. Consequently, and under the influence of this mistaken understanding, public attitude towards pursuit of worldly possessions, even through legitimate means, began to shift accordingly, thereby giving rise to the phenomenon of gross underutilization of individual and collective potential and, in some cases, resigned acceptance to endure poverty even when it’s absolutely preventable.

Also, apparently capitalizing on this mentality, and in their eagerness to score cheap political goals, politicians in the region are increasingly fond of introducing ridiculous initiatives purportedly to economically empower the less privileged in their respective constituencies. And they indeed attract public recognition for “empowering” people with, say, shayi or tsire joints stuff, shushaina kits, roadside food vending stuff and other things that lack micro-economic sustainability potential. This is in addition to the fact that, the process of selecting the beneficiaries is always marred by nepotism in favour of those with connections who might not necessarily be helplessly poor in the first place.

Interestingly, the average northerner’s peculiar tendency to glorify ineptitude is equally easily observable even among the relatively privileged social strata in the region who have achieved different levels of success in their various business, academic and professional fields of interest. The average seemingly successful northern Nigerian business owner, for instance, runs his business largely haphazardly that he hardly maintains things as basic as standard accounting/auditing system and a feasibility study-based investment policy. As a typical Alhaji, he instead counts more on the spiritual services of Malaman tsibbu to whom he owes the growth of his wealth. Also, with his typical rent-seeking business mentality, he may be rich, yet his business remains structurally too weak to provide appropriate employment opportunities for skilled manpower. By the way, this explains the relatively barely observable presence of business owners from the region in competitive business and professional service delivery industries in the country e.g. banking and finance, communications, oil and gas, aviation, power infrastructure, IT etc.

Now, in the face of this underlying attitudinal constraint, it’s obvious that the success of any strategic economic development project and micro-economic empowerment initiative depends on the level of the targeted people’s awareness and sense of responsibility. And to improve these, it’s equally obvious that, apart from the need for the state governments concerned to embark on sustained campaigns in this regard, human development activists in the region should push for the introduction of attitude improving and motivational lessons in school syllabi across the region.