In response to some questions I have received asking me to put in the right perspective, the economic rationale behind the voting patterns of the people of Ekiti State, the land of honour, I am happy to put forward my submission after some critical thoughts. The most appalling reason adduced by non-economist observers was that most of the Ekiti people who voted are peasants, poor and need immediate attention of the government to provide the Stomach Infrastructure for them rather than building roads, hospitals, schools, dams, etc. Hence, these observers submitted that POVERTY was the major albatross of the people. Surprisingly, I will argue in this piece that POVERTY is not the problem of the Ekiti VOTERS (I deliberately used the word voters rather than People because most of Ekiti People are not Ekiti Voters. Only just over 300,000 voted out of about 1.6 million eligible Ekitis 18 years and above).IGNORANCE of the voters was responsible! Having spent 1/3 of my entire lifetime in Ekiti, I can confidently say something about this homogenous group of people. The people are ignorant and lack foresight to understand the immediate and long-term benefits of critical infrastructures far and above transfer payments which correlates highly with transitory consumption. Before you disagree with me, you need to answer the following questions: 1. If Ekiti masses and mostly farmers are poor, why do they replant the best specie of the crops like yams while they endure hunger for some periods later in the year until the next harvest season rather than consuming their best yam output at any harvest season?? 2. If Ekiti masses are poor, why do they use part of the farm produce sales earnings to buy cutlasses, chemicals, etc in preparation for the next planting season. Why dont they consume all their sales proceeds at any harvest season because of poverty??? 3. If Ekiti people are poor, why do they spend appreciable percentage of their meagre incomes on childrens education rather than forgoing this for immediate consumption??? etc The fact remains that while they could understand the necessity for private critical investment against the future in the examples above, they lack good understanding of public sector investment just because the positive externalities of the infrastructures are not directly appreciated by the same people who are the beneficiaries. I hope they wont learn their lessons the hard way!!! Ire ooooooooo.
Posted on: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 19:37:56 +0000
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