SAGAMITE: SOCIAL WELFARE BENEFITS, YEAH RIGHT

Sagamite is a bachelors graduate from one of the UK’s elite universities after an early life in Nigeria. He is an experienced management consultant that has worked with firms in a diverse range of industries both in public and private sector. His experience provides him with a catalogue of versatile and arcane knowledge. His current interests include logical structure of opinions/arguments, entrepreneurship and human psychology. He prides himself on his organic, objective and independent thinking, so the audience should expect a significant number of his articles to be contra-popular belief. He is one of Nigeria’s leading objective-Contrarian thinkers about  life’s generally accepted conventional wisdom

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One argument that I have seen or heard a few that makes me almost burst into laughter is when some Nigerians argue that the Nigerian government should set up and provide welfare benefits to the whole or part of the citizenry.

Nigeria is not a country with the infrastructure and moral disposition to engage in such virtuous project. Trying to engage in such would just be a major disaster and expose the leaders as thicker than the Amazon forest.

I would go into some of these infrastructural and moral disposition deficiencies that make such schemes impossible in Nigeria except the government want to pour money down the drain (or steal more money).

Census – This is a country where the government do not even know to reasonable accuracy the total number of the population and where they are really resident. The census is normally filled with fraud (especially in the neighbourhoods that would require welfare) and where there is mass migration during the counts (to “boost my region for the national cake”). Without knowing how many people are in the country and where they are located, you cannot plan effectively and you leave the scheme open to mass fraud.

Identity/records – This is a country where the government does not even know who is Nigerian. There is no sufficient recording of birth and people do not possess documents that can prove they are citizens. Add this to the porosity of the vast borders with poor nations and a virtually starving one north of the country and you have a recipe for pouring water in a basket if you have a social welfare programme. Many people would just pour over the border to register and get paid. The major identity tool in the nation is normally language spoken and many of these bordering nations have many citizens that speak Nigerian languages. Even if locals can help you identify if the foreigners are local or not, they are likely to ask for a cut of the welfare from the foreigners rather than rat on them.

Population of poor – Now let’s get to the non-infrastructural practicalities. The required reach the welfare would have to cover considering number of poor in the country would be enormous. With more than 80% living on less than $2 a day, it would be a huge drain on national resources to provide welfare for that volume of poor people. The UK spends more than $256bn on benefits (includes jobseekers allowance, disability allowance, housing benefits, state pensions etc.). This is on a population of roughly 60m, where majority are well-off and healthy. Nigeria’s current annual overall national budget is less than $35bn, and we have a population of over 160m where majority are dearth poor and in poor health (lest we forget, the average life expectancy is about 54). We would have to put the whole annual budget into a welfare programme to even make a meaningful dent in alleviating the suffering.

Corrupt government – I don’t even think I need to go into depth stating that majority of these monies would be looted before it gets to those that need it. It would just be an avenue for the heartless government and state officials to line their pockets. Majority of the current budget (you can bet as much as 60%) is already frequently looted. The money would not go to the poor voiceless. It would just lead to many luxury retailers deciding to expand and build their shops in Nigeria for the few that loot the state dry to come and buy.

Corrupt citizenry – Not only would you have influx of foreigners into the country for the welfare benefits, Nigerians themselves are extremely crooked people. It would not only be the poor that would try and obtain the benefits, also some of the better-off would try to supplement their income and lifestyle by crookedly claiming these benefits.  Without national records, I can guarantee the nation would become one where people have multiple identities.

Forget “we would use biometrics”, the government is too corrupt to deliver such project at such a scale and the project would only be a corruption-fest. So there will be several cases of people having up to 8 identities all claiming welfare benefits, and these would be the well-off doing this as they would be able to afford the cost of the bribes to get the false identity or have connections with government officials that can help them get it, which would mean the welfare would not even get to the poor it was intended for.

My tribe should not feed your tribe – And finally, the tribal and ethnic angle. The reality is that the poverty heat map of the country would show the red spots are deeper in the North of the country and this would be where the welfare would be needed the most. Considering the intense fight for resources in the country and the deep divide and animosity between the people, especially the North and the South, and the revenue to fund welfare would probably come from a southern resource; then any welfare programme (if applied on needs basis) would only worsen the dichotomy of the nation. There would be increased animosity between the people, this would not be helped by the fact that it is likely we would (in the foreseeable future) still be seeing more killings based on religious ideology taking place in the North.

 

To summarise, it would be a complete waste of time and resources having any welfare programme in Nigeria at the moment. It would be like pouring money down the drain. It would be wiser to put that money into use for some more tangible public facilities until the nation can build the infrastructure, social discipline and public morals needed in a good welfare state.