The simple change of phase on the power metre at flat 1, 30 Adenubi street, Okota – raised no hairs at anytime. But a middle aged woman happened to have startled all three of the housemates this particular morning.? She was found behind the stairwell of the one-storey apartment building. At 5.30 a.m., for the three thirty-something-year-old male occupants of the flat, she was a thief, on first instinct. Moments later, her identity as the after-school hours teacher of their neighbour’s three kids spelled only one word – homeless.
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The poor will always have
There are grimmer cases of poverty. Poverty is real and many who have lived their lifetime in ‘abject or absolute’ poverty. Whether it is at the rural centres or urban squalours, the stigma of poverty always manages to hang around. An old beggar on the kerb, the scruffy scavenging kid or the mother -with kids on her back and hands – walking up to motorists are all constant images of poverty.
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Poverty by numbers
Statistics have shown that poverty has risen in Nigeria, with almost 100 million people living on less than $1 (N157) a day, despite economic growth. The National Bureau of Statistics said 60.9% of Nigerians in 2010 were living in absolute poverty – this figure had risen from 54.7% in 2004. Almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 (N393) a day. The Democratic Republic of the Congo with 71 million people has a GDP per capital of $348, as of 2011 and has become the poorest country in the world.
The number of people who live in poverty in America stands at 46 million, half being children. In the UK there are 3.6 million children living in poverty? or more than one in four. According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. The states of poverty seem to always proliferate themselves but what does this portend for the struggle against poverty??
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The bright ‘ideas’ to end poverty
At the recently concluded 2012, Tokyo Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group, opinions were sought on what it will take to end poverty in the world. The three-piece ‘poverty board’ at the Meetings’ Tokyo International Forum venue was resplendent with solutions written at the back of special cards.
?“Providing microcredit to rural females and marketing outlets for their products,” Omneia Helmy, a Cairo-based Egyptian professor of economics said? his work as an executive director of research at the Egyptian Centre for Economic Studies (ECES)? which will make his opinion respectable. Senegal’s Lamine Dieng toed same lines. “Empower women so that they can reach their potential,” he wrote on his card.? Another delegate, Susan, added infant mortality to the calls for women empowerment Job creation was never to be forgotten. Aleksander Janev from Macedonia had it written clearly on his card,? “Create jobs so that they can work, charity doesn’t help.”?
Education, cooperation and accommodation were the key areas New York’s Alistair Thomson wanted to tackle poverty from Peter Id Pals of Accenture, Netherlands chose to focus on the young” “Young people need to build skills to find a job or build their own business.” Samantha Attridge from the UK saw political will as key ingredient in the fight towards eradicating poverty
The issue of policy promotion got Belgian J. Kweklenboah’s attention, “stop promoting policies that focus on growth first and inequality second.” An anonymous delegate voiced that trade imbalances and subsidies in the Western world needed to be addressed if poverty was to be tackled.? Nigeria’s Ijimakinwa Seun highlighted good leadership and an honest fight against corruption as his solution to halt poverty.
For others, the money expended on annual meetings needed to be curbed. World Bank’s Merrel Tuck is part of this group. “Spend less money on giant expensive annual meetings and more on concessional funding to tackle food security and family planning,” Tuck wrote.?
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Necessary virtues
All suggestions on the board hinged on a set of values,? love, kindness, respect, appreciation and compassion. These virtues were listed in many instances on the board.? Are the solutions and virtue –set strong enough to make us dump poverty in the annals of history? There’s more to be said that has not even been said. Poverty is set to succumb to humanity based on the multi-faceted ideas that were pinned up. Where there is a will there’s always a way, we have heard. Will humanity’s will this time end poverty? Time or people will tell.
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