I could remember many years back when I attended a seminar organized by NGOs with International bodies here in Lagos state. Several speakers talked about the theme: Eradicating Poverty in Africa, we were given few minutes to contribute our ideas or ask questions if there was any and I approached the podium to ask a question.
The question came up immediately after I got the seminar and I pondered over it throughout the whole activities that were held the seminar, my thoughts were split with the argument that Poverty can't be completely eradicated from Africa even if everyone was given a huge sum of money to start a new life. I was shaky due to the large audience so I kept my question very simple and all I asked was "Can poverty be completely eradicated?". I made up my mind already that it can't be completely eradicated but I wanted to hear from the intelligent speakers that were on sit.
It took us half an hour to get through with the question and their answer tallied with mine even though we had a different reason to believe that it can't be completely eradicated in Africa. I will extend this post to the world because the issue of Poverty is a Universal Problem but the rate at which it has eaten deep into us is quite different. I can't deny the fact that Africa is rated as the continent most affected by poverty despite having enough wealth to make them among the rich places in the world and this will make me touch down briefly why the world is experiencing a high level of poverty.
I am not a fan of those who put all the blames of the world on the government when it comes to tackling poverty, we citizens have our hands in making poverty have deep roots amongst us. Gone are the days when we use to believe that lack of education is the reason behind poverty, millions of graduates today on the streets of the world hoping for a miracle. Hundred of applicants will struggle for ten openings in an organization and these greedy politicians will still have their people fixed for those jobs.
Corrupt system of Government: Corruption is the biggest factor that has empowered poverty and our governments have failed us in that part, I concluded a long time ago that the reason for having government have been hijacked because people seek the post in the government just to embezzle the country funds.
It should be a system where the government serves the people but it is the people who work hard to serve the government and yet countries aren't experiencing any changes.
I know of a country that is living on a huge debt because they keep borrowing despite the revenue the government realizes every year, I won't be surprised if the unborn generations that knew nothing this are been dragged around for the debt because the government keeps stealing despite borrowing.
Overpopulation: I mentioned earlier that government is not the only one responsible for why the world is struggling against poverty, the population of the world has grown past the available resources.
People go on having more kids than they should not considering the effect on the economy, these don't have access to anything proper which includes education, health care, and others. According to Wikipedia on world population, the world population has surpassed 7.9billion and the real gist is that it took over 2 million years of human prehistory and history for the world population to reach 1billion and took us just 200 years to reach 7billion.
I fear what the world population would be like in the next hundred years if nothing is done by us to control the population because the more we grow in numbers, the lesser the availability of the resources we have for us to live on and that means we could take poverty to a whole new level all over the world.
War and terrorism: These are silent factors that are stylishly taking away wealth from us due to the destruction of things such as businesses, investment, properties, social amenities, and others. Recently the richest man in Nigeria made it known that he has moved more than half of his wealth abroad to start a company since Nigeria is in lots of crisis.
This man owns lots of companies and he has thousands of staffs he employed, he is one way or the other helping people earn a living in exchange for their services. If this man finally decides to completely halt his business in Nigeria, do you know how many people will be jobless in the country?
Just like this man, many investors who would have boosted the country's economy must have fled as well and this would leave the country in a helpless situation in the battle against poverty.
There have been numerous systems set up to clip the wings of poverty in the world, they have been very effective but the three factors listed above are not doing us any form of good.
Poverty can't be completely eradicated because thing has gone really bad beyond repairs, we can only live to contain the rate at which it grows which will make it reduce gradually but not to the extent of getting rid of it completely. If half of the world population can be free from poverty, the other half will somehow be influenced.
Lead image. All other images were made by me using Canva.
Stay tuned for my next post as a take you through the journey of how an invention has helped a lot out of poverty in the world as a whole. The real deal about this post I started will be revealed in the next post.
Sadly, it cannot be totally eradicated. Even the Bible made us understand that we will always have the poor in the land.
I read a post where someone mentioned that why would anyone bring a child they cannot cater for into the world and that is true. Most people would tell you "Children are blessings" and yet they won't make adequate plans for them. The government cannot be responsible for everything even though they cause their own havoc but as individuals, we know our income and how things are, we shouldn't make it unnecessarily difficult for ourselves. Everything requires proper planning and I know there are exceptional cases where the unexpected happens and that is fine but we should nick things in the bud while we can.