Do the poor really count? In February 2012, the National Bureau of Statistics released its Nigeria Poverty Profile Report 2010 which confirmed what every sensible Nigerian already knows – that the nation’s poverty level is increasing at an alarming rate. According to that report, 69 per cent of Nigerians lived in relative poverty in 2010. In the last two years, several other reports from institutions that should be taken seriously, including the World Bank, the African Development Bank and a recent multi-partner Afro-barometer project, have raised similar alarms that Nigeria is not making serious progress in the fight against poverty. True, poverty is not a Nigerian problem. It remains one of the unsolved global tragedies of our time. But Nigeria’s poverty is a particularly unsettling phenomenon, not only because it contradicts our natural resource wealth, but also because we do not even know exactly how poor we are. Several credible individuals and institutions have warned that Nigeria does not have reliable poverty data and that the national statistical system is in need of serious reforms. Year in year out, reports on progress towards the Millennium Development Goals emphasise that “a critical barrier to planning for achievement of the MDGs continues to be the availability of up to date data on most of the indicators”. What this means is that Nigeria really has a long way to go, because, in the words of the 19th century physicist, Lord Kelvin, “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it”. Yet, rather than investing in the metrics and uptake of poverty data so that policies can be more evidence-based, what we see in Nigeria is endless controversies over numbers, from census count to poverty figures. Let us look at some of the immediate issues surrounding our poverty numbers. First, the numbers highlight the stark contradiction between Nigeria’s acclaimed macroeconomic buoyancy and its poverty-stricken underbelly. The reports show Nigeria to have fallen into the disjuncture of the so-called “jobless growth”. Is it not a big paradox that Nigeria’s much-touted “impressive” GDP growth rate in the past few years has happened side by side a deepening poverty? If our economy is growing as well as available statistics claim, the poverty incidence should be much lower. The numbers are just not adding up and our number crunchers have a big question to answer here. Which brings us to the second question: Who is responsible for generating and providing national statistics? The National Bureau of Statistics on its website refers to itself as “the main statistical agency and custodian of official statistics in Nigeria” but the reality in Nigeria is different. The way we bandy statistics about in this country creates serious concern. International aid organisations, NGOs, Federal Government agencies and media houses routinely contradict one another with figures on important issues such as poverty rate, GDP growth rate, fertility rates, school enrolment, maternal and child mortality, HIV and AIDS prevalence, etc. Just grab copies of the annual Country Strategy Documents of some of the development agencies helping Nigeria in its fight against poverty and you’ll get an idea of what I mean. Something urgently needs to be done about harmonising data for all the well-meaning efforts to make more than just a dent on poverty. And the NBS needs to wake up to this imperative. Also worrisome is a political blind spot that characterises our utilisation of data. For one, the uncritical casualness with which not only government officials but also the media and non-profit actors sometimes quote “borrowed” figures betrays an assumption that such statistics are politically neutral. But they often are not. In fact, some international agencies have been known to “tweak” figures in ways that will justify their predetermined and usually controversial policy recommendations. Still on the political side, ever since former President Olusegun Obasanjo controversially rejected Nigeria’s poverty figures some years ago, it seems to have become fashionable among Nigerian public officials, especially government image makers, to hurriedly discredit any statistics seen as unflattering to government. This disturbing trend played out again recently when the Minister for Information, Labaran Maku, and the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Reuben Abati, came out in public to loudly deny an AfDB report on Nigeria’s poverty situation. I wonder if any of the officials got in touch with the NBS to get the views of the government statisticians on the controversial report. Rather, they were quoting GDP figures we know to be even more controversial. What I expected was for the NBS to caution the government officials, as the AfDB report was not saying anything new or markedly different from what the Bureau has been telling us. But this never happened. Again, the annual poverty reports by the NBS should normally be the official barometer by which to measure how the nation is doing in its fight against poverty. But just how reliable are these reports? For proper planning and policy responses to poverty, statistics should be released in a timely and predictable manner. The delays and unpredictable way in which the NBS reports get to the public leaves much to be desired. A situation in which 2010 poverty report is released in 2012 and the 2011 poverty report is still being expected at the end of 2013 not only adds to the confusion but also frustrates planning efforts. The disconnect between policy making and its empirical bases reveals a deeper malaise within our policy culture. Our poverty statistics must feed into the planning process, especially the annual budgets, the medium term frameworks and the nation’s longer-term plans, such as Vision 2020. I understand that the National Planning Commission supervises the NBS. I really hope someone at the NPC is reading this. Nigeria joined the rest of the world in adopting the MDGs with an ambition to “halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day”. As the MDGs deadline approaches with Nigeria unlikely to meet any of the goals, it has become even more critical, to take a hard look at our poverty policies. This is, in fact, injury time for our poverty reduction efforts. It is hardly the time to for our spin-doctors to feed the world an impression that all is well with Nigeria’s social and economic health. Neither is this time to play the ostrich with the biting reality of poverty in the land. If the poor among us really count, then we need a reality check on the issue of poverty. And a good place to begin is our poverty statistics.
Posted on: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 06:51:15 +0000
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