Obaseki: The stigma of increasing poverty in Edo

Poverty is a deadly and persistent disease. It ravages corporate nations and the people, alike. Quantifiable poverty, in particular, begets some other forms of poverty. Poverty increasingly rules global discourse and attention. Until now, it had besieged the Nigerian polity, as it is with Edo, the pacer-state of the federation, the meat of this article.

In Edo State, with Mr. Godwin Nogheghase Obaseki, as governor, for the past six years, more abject poverty and its variable scourges, had reached an apogee, an expression that the populace is next to giving up. For a state nicknamed the ‘Heartbeat of the Nation’, no one would disagree with mockers on the reversal sobriquet of Edo being the ‘Heartbeat of Poverty’, Did the World Bank, in its 2016 report, not proclaim Nigeria as the world’s poverty capital?

By that report, Nigeria displaced India to the first position of the global poverty index, with a dismayed 63% of its population as an average individual living below the poverty line of $1.9 per day, against India’s 21.9% population.

As if buttressing the accuracy of acute poverty claims about Nigeria, which also implicated Edo State as a main specimen, another damning report, reeled out lately in November, 2022, by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and others, castigated the country as having 133 million poor country men, thus representing more than half of its rising 200 million population. The NBS, in the report collaborated the ubiquitous United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) and few others!

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Called the National Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), the report went beyond the usual public perceptions of poverty (the lack of money and other material things), to illustrate access to health, education, poor living standards, alongside unemployment and inadequate statutory frameworks.

Recognising the MPI report as a baseline to addressing the acute poverty nag, the President Muhammadu Buharis’ government, even though it proclaimed to have evolved a people oriented poverty reduction policies and activities, such as the disbursement of the $700m Abacha’s loot and others, to no avail, still professes to and is seen making further efforts at severe poverty reduction.

Obviously, as overseer of the very ministry that supervises other ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), especially on the poverty related issues, Prince Clem Agba, the minister of state in the Ministry of Budget and National Planning (MBNP), must have dutifully unveiled the MPI report; to a widespread stake-holding federal, states and local governments and the general public, as it ordinarily required the attention of all and sundry to mitigate.

Prince Agba couldn’t be insensitive to the dimensional approach as an enduring panacea to the varied poverty blights, as he consequently asserted during a federal government versus public deliberations on the issues.

“Using the MPI beyond measurements, but as a policy that allows government to tailor intervention profiles of each state, making data-driven and evidence-based policies that will result in greater impacts”, He had postulated, amongst other related issues.

For Governor Obaseki, who claims to bask on the people, who returned him to governorship power, it is ironical as it is agonizing that majority of the people themselves, believe that there is none of Edo’s past governors, who had had the infamy predisposition to anti-people policy execution and the worsening of poverty against Edo folks, like Governor Obaseki had done.

Certainly, Prince Agba deserves a pat on the back as he had been eulogized widely, for his determined and innovative efforts at midwifing competent policies and projects in his ministry, for the country. Alas, for no obvious reasons than individual political differences and ‘ego-feeding’, the Obaseki’s government randomly picks on him for contempt and mudslinging binges, over his efforts for Nigeria, particularly Edo, his state of origin.

Pleasantly, Agba, as minister of state for budget and national planning, did not absolve the federal government of blameworthiness in the poverty problem, as the NBS and another that emanated the critical MPI report, are appendage agencies to the MBNP. Otherwise, where is Agba’s offence at putting things in their right perspectives, that the 36 states and FCT are also proportionally responsible for the acute poverty that plagues each of their jurisdictions of Nigeria?

Presently, Edo State is yoked by unbearable unemployment, runaway inflation and excessive costs of staple foods and services. That however, means that Edo state government needs external help! Instead, Obaseki carries on as if it has all the answers to the mountainous need of the people, which underscores the said MPI report.

Severally, this writer knew that some infrastructural and poverty-reduction intervention projects, which Mr. Agba had influenced to the state, were fortuitously thwarted by Edo government. The Obaseki’s behavior was unbecoming that a tolerant Dr. Osagie Ehanire, the minister of health, who is also from the state, once complained that the government was frustrating his effort to establish a number of hospitals in the state. Also, numerous projects meant for the state by diaspora Edo indigenes were being discouraged where some top government officers are not given bribes.

The bitter testimony by the Edo majority is that the Governor Obaseki’s ongoing seventh year in office is a period eaten by the locusts. His human and capital projects (handful they are) are nothing than mere window-dressing. The Obaseki’s performance is a media utopia.

For instance, the Governor Obaseki’s image makers, since 2016, when the government came to power, had continually applauded the government as very prudent in spending, hence it didn’t so far borrow funds to manage the state. But, all that proved to be unpardonable lie, when in 18th March, 2022 the Debt Management Office (DMO), told a bewildered public that the Obaseki’s Edo owed a huge $260.2million external debt and was number four on the chart of insolvent states and FCT. Irritatingly, the governor, who earlier denied owing, had within few months claimed to have paid the huge debt it said it did not owe. How possible?

Simply put, the financial rascality and unaccountability of the Obaseki-led government is limitless! For instance, it took the exposure by Nyesom Wike, the Rivers State governor, for Edo State government to admit to have long received a massive N21.7billion from the 13% derivation from oil. Yet, a lackadaisical Crusoe Osagie, the governor’s guide on Media Projects, who hadn’t earned even a million naira before he attained the position, demeaned the huge sum as a mere token. This is also a government who defies procurement laws.

Yet, the governor is ruining Edo businesses and economy with multiple-taxation, without similar rebates, which the state had severally received from the federal government, without justification of its spending. Now, Obaseki is bent on imposing internally generated revenue to an overstretching limit of N38billion and beyond, on the hapless populace! A perceptive Edo pubic never takes Governor Obaseki serious and that his government is largely responsible for the rapid development that the state had made, recently. Of course, a report by the World Bank Development Brief 37, titled Remittances Brave Global Odds of November, 2022 indicated that Nigeria (Edo State in view), is one amongst top receivers of diaspora remittances to low and middle-income countries, in 2022.

How possible is it for the Edo governor to shake off the direct liability as a principal influencer of the acute food crises and hunger in Edo land, which the same MPI report, wherein Edo is amongst some 26 states and FCT of the country whose 25.3 million people are likely to face acute food and nutritional insecurity between June and August, 2023? Alas external agriculture funds had been denied Edo farmers, just as arable lands, belonging to aboriginal communities are being grabbed by the governor to benefit big-time plantation owners, thus throwing the original land owners into misery and abject poverty.

Like a skilled puppeteer, Edo is the helpless object that Governor Obaseki freely pulls its strings. And he is the beginning and end of the state as the people are sidelined from the polity. Those who doubt these could decipher as to why he is nicknamed “The Wake and See Governor”!

The Obaseki’s government had frequently travelled around the world, on public funds, thus feigning efforts at attracting investors to the state. While the memoranda of understanding (MOU), are signed behind the people, the projects hardly materialise.

Unless Governor Obaseki retraces his faulty steps of his slipshod policies and activities, by actually dedicating himself to the well-being of the people, who trusted him with their votes, the rash of public misgivings on the account of his misrule, which fueled the EndSARS crisis and the breakage of Edo prisons, may continually hunt him.
After all, there is life after being a governor!