Agriculture is the third leg of the tripod upon which the author anchors his anti-poverty remedies. He avers that agriculture has the propensity to provide cheap but high quality food for the people, serve as a source of employment and income generation thereby serving as a major contributor to foreign exchange earnings and it also serves as a market for the industrial sector.
The author’s work in this chapter is indeed like a free feasibility study and consultancy service for anyone intending to go into cassava and palm oil farming. Closely related to agriculture in the author’s estimation, is mining which according to him has an array of economic potentials for all the states of the federation because all the states have abundant mineral resource endowments which they can develop for the prosperity of their citizens.
I am fascinated by the richness of the policy recommendations contained in Chapter Seven. Particularly the bold assertion by the author that Nigeria’s best poverty eradication programme is back-to-farm, i.e. agriculture. In this wise, he also recommends the substitution of the current National Youth Service Corps Scheme with the Youth Agricultural Revolution whereby the country will be divided into different zones of at least ten, each zone being used for different kinds of crops depending on suitability. In this programme, the corps members will be made to serve on government farms annually, while retaining those who wish to continue after the service year.
Leadership, in the estimation of the author, is a critical factor in the eradication of poverty in the land. Leadership at all levels must be transparent and empathetic towards the people such that government’s investments into poverty alleviation programmes are judiciously utilised for the end they meant.
Also fundamental is the author’s recommendation of an inclusive, learner-centred early childhood education. This is in his belief that the foundation of our education as presently run, does not and cannot engender the needed development as it is incapable of building our children into the kind of adults that will be transformative in their approach to the society and to self. In other word, our basic education requires re-engineering. This approach should run through the other levels of education.
Equally revolutionary is the author’s recommendation for the establishment of entrepreneurial institutions across the country. This he said has the propensity to effect a change in the mind set of the youth. I subscribe fully to this recommendation in the firm belief that it will fill the vacuum created by the inadequacies of the existing conventional institutions in terms of their skills contents.
My experience as a teacher and a former Director of entrepreneurship development in Federal University, Lokoja has exposed me to the weakness in the curricula of our university education as it relates to entrepreneurship education. Although the philosophies of most departments take some cognizance of skills, this is too negligible to achieve any meaningful long term national developmental impact. This may not be entirely blamed on the curricula but also on the weak link that infrastructure and equipment constitute in the system, that is, apart from the bloated population of students in some programmes. Importantly therefore, we could argue that there is an unacceptable gap between theory and societal need which our education is yet to address and resolve. If this is addressed, we shall have graduates who can solve societal challenges, employ people, create prosperity for themselves and help to eradicate the scourge of poverty in the land.
In other word, if our education is not skills based, that is, if our education is not built on problem solving, then there is an unacceptable yawning gap between our philosophy of education and its delivery.
On the whole, Senator Olabode Ola’s Why the Poor are Still with Us is packed full with both theoretical insights and actionable recommendations that, if followed, will initiate a genuine process of curing Nigeria of the toga of chronic poverty and usher her into the realm of prosperity, which will eventually eradicate or sufficiently alleviate poverty in the land. When this is done, we should be gathered here in no distant future for a follow up publication which might be titled: Why the Poor are no Longer with Us’. It is on this note that I wish to recommend this book to departments in our institutions of higher learning concerned with the teaching of entrepreneurship, economics and related courses. The Federal Government and all its agencies of intervention in job creation, entrepreneurship, agriculture, mining, small and medium scale businesses as well as their counterparts in the states should access this book for insight. Similarly, individuals desirous of gaining understanding of the issue of poverty and strategies to combat it should obtain the book as a true companion and tool of navigation.
- Prof. Ibileye lectures at the Federal University, Lokoja.
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