NEEDS and Poverty Reduction

Figure 1 in the Appendix shows Nigeria’s relative poverty rates from 1980 to 2010. From 1980 to 2004 the rate of poverty doubled from 27% to 54%. Six years after NEEDS, poverty again increased to 69%. What went wrong with the government’s poverty reduction strategy—one of the core focuses of NEEDS?

According to Ugwu (2012), the greatest impediment to poverty reduction was NEEDS’ dependence on the private sector. Since the poor are unable to participate in many market activities, the private sector has little incentive to engage with the country’s worse off. Instead, Ugwu argues for a more active developmental state which plays a more direct role in economic affairs than what is prescribed through NEEDS. As Ugwu states:

Whether we opt for hard or soft state, the Nigerian state must retain the capacity to choose ―winners and allocate resources preferentially according to an overall plan of development that answers to national priority. And in our situation such a priority is drastic reduction of general poverty and class, gender, and region-specific poverty. (p. 47)

Ugwu also identifies national leadership as a critical component to NEEDS’ failure to ameliorate poverty. He identifies the lack of credibility of the Obasanjo government, especially after the “rigged” 2003 election, as the source of the unwillingness of the national government to properly reduce poverty. He cites the failure of the government to effectively engage with civil society and Obasanjo’s despotic tendencies as a cause for social and labor unrest against much of the government’s agenda (For more on labor mobilization during this period see Eze, 2014). Furthermore, Ugwu sees policies such as land reform, progressive taxation, and providing credit access for the poor as key measures for poverty reduction.

Additionally, Ugoani (2017) indicates that corruption was the most important factor that limited poverty reduction. He describes how billions of naira meant for development projects have been siphoned off by government officials. A strategy of good governance must precede the implementation of pro-poor programs in order to maximize poverty reduction.

Furthermore, Ugoani also presents the shortcomings of the government’s education program initiated under NEEDS as an indictment of the government’s failure to execute a long-term poverty reduction strategy. He finds that even after the enactment of compulsory education, millions of Nigerians are not in schools and eighty-percent of the teachers do not have the necessary skills. This, along with the failure to supply enough universities for its post-secondary students, were critical for Nigeria to miss the education targets of the Millennium Development Goals.

Similarly, Innocent, et al. (2014) presents the problem of poverty reduction in Nigeria as a problem of poor governance. Just as during NEEDS and past periods, decision making about how to address poverty is left to an elite few. The people who are the targets of the government’s new policies are rarely, if ever, consulted. Instead, while ambitious anti-poverty programs are unveiled every so often, they never receive the proper funding nor administration to successfully implement these policies.