Agbo Agbo
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Eradicating poverty and achieving development is one of the top priorities of the developing world. At the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000, leaders of various countries passed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with poverty reduction as a primary goal. They thus launched a massive anti-poverty movement across the world. Again, at the 2015 UN Sustainable Development Summit, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted with poverty reduction as its primary goal.
Last April the international charity, Oxfam, revealed that the number of extreme poor in Nigeria had skyrocketed to 94.4 million people, with 3 million having been added to the figure in just six months. As mentioned last week, Nigeria, in 2017, overtook India as the world’s poverty capital. India’s has 70 million destitute which is 5.124 percent of a total population of 1.36 billion. Nigeria’s 94.5 million poor constitute 47.2 percent of our current estimated population of 200 million. Nearly a half of our populations are living under the shackle of poverty.
Nigeria’s current status as the world capital of poverty is nothing short of a national embarrassment. We are supposed to be OPEC’s sixth biggest oil exporter and Africa’s biggest economy by far. And we are richly endowed with natural resources. It is damaging to both our national honour and our external image and standing in the world comity of nations.
Poverty is popularly defined as lack of sufficient material resources to live a decent life in society. Distinctions are often made between absolute poverty, which refers to the complete lack of access to basic needs such as food, shelter and clothing; and relative poverty, which refers to a condition where people cannot meet their own basic needs relative to the minimum standards that obtain within a society. This notwithstanding, some countries have tackled poverty head-on. China is a classic case study.
So, how did China tackle poverty? Through government-led massive poverty alleviation and development work, the government helped more than 700 million people cast off poverty according to China’s national poverty line. The rural poverty-stricken population was reduced to 30.46 million by the end of 2017, with the poverty incidence dropping to 3.1%. The government included poverty alleviation into its “Five-Sphere Integrated Plan” – a plan to promote coordinated economic, political, cultural, social, and ecological advancement – and the “Four-pronged Comprehensive Strategy” – a strategy of comprehensive moves to finish building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, deepen reform, and advance law-based governance.
In November 2015, the government issued what it termed “The Decision” on winning the fight against poverty. According to analysts, these anti-poverty efforts were unparalleled in terms of their intensity, scale and influence as it achieved one of the greatest progress of poverty reduction in history. At the end of 2012, there were 98.99 million people living under the current poverty line. By the end of 2017, the total poverty-stricken population stood at 30.46 million, with more than 66 million people being lifted out of poverty over five years. Those living under the current poverty line were further reduced by over two thirds.
The strategy targeted poverty-stricken counties which began in 1986. By 2016, 28 poverty-stricken counties were among the first batch to shake off poverty, which marked the first decline in the total number of poor counties. In 2017, about 100 counties were lifted out of poverty
The Chinese strategy followed seven clear paths. They started with setting clear poverty reduction goals. The first goal steadily guaranteed sufficient food and clothing, compulsory education, basic health care, and housing security for the rural poor population. As a result, the per capita disposable income increase among the impoverished farmers is expected to surpass the national average level by 2020.
Second, all the poverty-stricken people were registered with the government. In 2014, the government started to collect the accurate data of the poor population. 800,000 people were sent to different villages for this purpose. They delineated 128,000 poverty-stricken villages, 29.48 million poor households and 89.62 million impoverished people altogether and basically got a clear picture of the distribution, poverty causes and poverty reduction needs of the impoverished population.
From August 2015 to June 2016, nearly 2 million people across the country were again mobilised to continue this work, as a complement to the previous round of registration. Another 8.07 million poor people got registered, and 9.29 million people who had been wrongly recognised as poverty-stricken were removed from the list. The accuracy of recognition was therefore further enhanced. Registration of the poor population enabled China to gather the poverty data specifically from each person, household and village.
Thirdly, they implemented a targeted poverty alleviation strategy. To achieve accuracy in project arrangements, fund use, implementation of measures, dispatch of poverty reduction officials to villages, and effects of poverty reduction, they carried out the “five-batch” policy to help the registered poverty-stricken population shake off poverty through industrial development, transfer employment, relocation, education and medical assistance. The “five-batch” policy denotes that one batch shall be lifted out of poverty via industrial development, relocation, eco-compensation, education, and social security. As for those who have lost all or part of their ability to work, they will be lifted out of poverty through the social security policies.
Next, they established the “seven institutional systems.” The first is an accountability system. Under this, the central government makes overall arrangements; provincial governments take responsibilities, while city and county governments implement specific projects. The second is a policy system where a top-down, well-coordinated policy system take different policies for poor households. The State Council then issued a poverty alleviation plan for the 13th “Five-Year Plan” period (2016-2020); central and state organs released 118 policy documents or implementation plans, and local governments introduced and improved their poverty alleviation documents. These documents and plans have provided targeted solutions to many long-standing, big and difficult problems, covering poverty alleviation through industrial development, relocation, labour export, transportation, water conservancy, education, health improvement, financial development, renovation of dilapidated houses, linkage with land increase or decrease, and assets income.
The next strategy encompassed an investment system that guarantees the investment of financial and human resources. In 2016, the special funds for poverty alleviation allocated by the central and local governments exceeded 100 billion yuan ($14.23 billion) for the first time. An additional 72.6 billion yuan ($10.38 billion) of financial bonds specially for relocation was issued, and the figure is expected to top 350 billion ($49.8 billion) in the next few years.
An assistance system with officials stationed in villages was also implemented. This requires that there should be a resident task force in every poor village and ‘person-in-charge’ for every poor household to achieve full coverage. The government dispatched a total of 775,000 officials to station in villages for a period of 1 to 3 years. This was followed by a social mobilisation system that encourages extensive public participation. To ensure success, a multi-channel, all-round supervision system was put in place. A poverty hotline, “12317” for poverty alleviation supervision was set up. It paved the way for disciplined inspection, supervision and auditing thereby applying all results to assessment and inspection.
The establishment of the most strict assessment system is the seventh. The central government introduced a method to assess the poverty alleviation and development effects of provincial committees and governments. From 2016 to 2020, an annual assessment will be carried out. The assessment mainly focuses on poverty reduction effects, accurate identification, targeted assistance, the use and management of poverty alleviation funds and other aspects, to guide poverty-relief efforts and ensure the quality of poverty alleviation. The completion of poverty alleviation task in 22 central and western provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities took place in 2016. This was assessed through inter-provincial cross examination and third-party assessment, referring to poverty monitoring data and registration data, and the performance evaluation, audit and social supervision of the use and management of special poverty-relief funds.
From the foregoing we can see that China’s approach to poverty reduction is militant and organised; it is therefore not surprising that they made positive headway.
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