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500 More Widows And Divorcees For Mass Wedding The Kano State Hisbah Board says it has concluded plans to marry off another set of 500 widows and divorcees in the third batch of its mass marriage program.

From Day to Day: Surviving on Nigeria’s Streets

At Independence in 1960, Nigeria’s population was 40 million, a sizable percentage of which was employed. The employment to population ratio grew until the early eighties when it started to decline following the collapse of world oil prices and poor policy decisions by government. Today, estimates put the employment to population ratio at 3.2 percent. Some projections indicate that there are about 90 million Nigerians willing and able to work, but unable to find employment. This translates into a loss of about $12 billion annually through economic inactivity as a result of the demand gap created by loss of economic power.
According to 2011 estimates, Nigeria’s population falls into the following age segments: 0-14 years: 40.9% (male 32,476,681/female 31,064,539); 15-64 years: 55.9% (male 44,296,228/female 42,534,542); 65 years and over: 3.1% (male 2,341,228/female 2,502,355). Because of serious structural imbalances in Nigeria’s economy, the composition of its GDP and its manner of growth, the country’s projected growth has little positive impact on the lives of citizens. And so as the following stories show, millions of Nigerians are reduced grinding out a livelihood on the streets, with the real possibility of becoming part of a wasted generation. Government figures show that at least 100 million Nigerians lives in abject poverty.
Auwal is 27, and sells kola nuts. His heels have worn through his flip-flops. There is no accurate way of measuring the distances he walks everyday peddling kola nuts, though several miles would not a bad guess. He has a wife and children back home, as well as aged parents he has to assist from time to time. The combined value of his tray and the kola nuts he sells is about $15. He lives from his tray.

Musa Mai Tabur has a small table at the gate of the uncompleted building where he has lived for a number of years. He is not sure of his age, only that he is over 30 because he was born sometime in the late 70s. He does not have to trek long distances to sell his wares. On his table are sweets, detergents, pure water, ci******es, mosquito repellant coils and a variety of other things. He travels back home once in a while to see his family. His entire stock is worth about $40. He lives from his table.

Danjuma is a teenager. He shows absolutely no fear as he darts in and out of traffic, selling chewing gum to motorists along the highway. He is not sure of his age, and frankly cannot be bothered. Whether he gets to eat something each day depends on how much chewing gum he is able to sell. He has no table, no tray and no wares of his own. He only gets a commission on whatever he is able to sell each day. He has no dependants yet, just fighting the brutal battle to survive by selling chewing gum, come rain, come shine. He lives from meal to meal.

Ibro sells snacks. His favorite spot is just before the traffic lights where vehicles stop for a minute or two. His best customers are the harried and hungry passengers in taxis and buses who buy snacks and canned drinks for a meal on the go. Ibro is ever on the lookout for municipal authorities that may arrest him and seize his carton of snacks and drinks. He has been arrested many times before and his wares ‘forfeited’ to government. But he comes back to the same spot as soon as he can raise enough capital to stock up. The total value of his wares is about $30. He is married with a child and sends money to his siblings whenever he can. He lives from his carton.

Buba knows every corner of the city. On his bicycle selling ice cream and bottled water, he pedals as far as he can and only gives up when he is overcome by sheer exhaustion. The bicycle does not belong to him, nor the ice cream and bottled water. His is just to sell for a commission at the end of the day. On good days, he earns about $5, though on very wet days, he earns just enough for a meal to make up for the tens of miles he pedals daily, rain or shine. He came to the city because there was nothing to inherit from his family’s farm. Now he sends money back home to his wife and children. He lives from his icebox.
Danbala is not yet 10. His father is a security man, while his mother sells food at what construction sites she can find. The entire family lives in the one room gatehouse of the house where his father works as security man. For Danbala, school is out of the question. He hawks ci******es and matches to motorists and pedestrians. There is no pay and no commission. He takes whatever he is offered, grateful for a morsel or two from any source. His entire being is programmed to fighting the ever present pangs of hunger to which he was born and from which there is no probable escape. He lives from errand to errand.

These are real life people from a city in northern Nigeria. The names may be Emeka, Dele, Akpan or Joseph. The names may also be Talatu, Agnes, T**i or Ngozi. The cities may be Lagos, Aba, Ibadan, Enugu or Port Harcourt. The goods they sell may be ‘pure water’, recharge cards or newspapers. They wares they sell may be buns, oranges, biscuits or groundnuts: the poverty and waste of young lives remain the same.

All across Nigeria’s towns and cities are millions of under-aged children and youth in the grips of starvation and destitution. They live a brutish life, eking livelihoods from trays, cartons, baskets and iceboxes, weaving through traffic and defying death at every turn. According to Nigeria’s minister of youth development, 20 million Nigerian youth are unemployed, surviving in vile conditions on the streets, uneducated, unrecognized, unaided. They live from day to day.
What are the real issues?
Nigeria, with a population of 162 million and a landmass of 356,700 sq. miles spent nearly $10 billion to import food in 2010. Of that amount, over $4 billion was spent on wheat; over $2 on rice; close to $1.5 billion on sugar and about $600 million on fish. Yet, out of an estimated 4 – 5 million ha, irrigable area of land, only 60,000ha is irrigated. And out of about 323 dams on the country, only a few are used for irrigation purposes. Clearly, agriculture, which provides the bulk of our GDP and the largest employer, remains mostly rain-fed and therefore seasonal.

In 2011, a leading telecom company in Nigeria reported half year revenues of approximately N344 billion (on an annualized basis, that is $4.4 billion or 1.2% of Nigeria’s $378 billion GDP). However, the company required less than 2,000 permanent staff to achieve that revenue. Conversely, according figures provided by Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), total production output in the sector declined by 10% to N165.7 billion in 2010 and capacity utilization dropped to 45%. The result is that today, manufacturing employs less than 1 million Nigerians.

Addressing these issues is critical to reverse this demographic time bomb. In addition to the central issue of energy, infrastructural development must receive government attention. Road, railways, air and sea ports must be built to encourage agriculture and manufacturing in all parts of the country. Similarly, access to start-up capital must be eased because at the moment, instead of lending to the real sector, dealing in Treasury Bills seems to be most profitable activity for many Nigerian banks. Operating conditions means that it is more profitable to collect cheap deposits from retail customers and government agencies and lend same at higher rates back to the government.

No doubt, Nigeria faces serious economic crisis. Despite the unprecedented GDP and volume of oil exports in the last decade or so, unemployment continues rise; massive oil revenues haven’t translated into large scale employment opportunities for Nigerians. Government policies must therefore seek to create macro level environments that will allow entrepreneurships to flourish. Job creation efforts should entail massive infrastructural spending by the public sector to stimulate economic opportunities for growth, wealth creation, employment and poverty eradication.
The tragedy however, is that instead of facing these grave challenges, the government of President Goodluck Jonathan plans to spend a quarter of all revenues this year security, forgetting that the deterioration of security are direct consequences of corruption, poverty, cavernous inequalities and the absence of opportunity for millions of Nigerians....find out more in da maiden edition