Whenever anyone searches online engines (google) for the meaning of the word virus it is certain to get two different meanings. One would be in relation to biology and the other in relation to ICT but one thing is clear. The negative impact is always devastating.
In the year 2018, it was recorded that Nigeria had the highest population of people living in poverty with a whopping amount of 89.6 million people amounting to 50% of the nation’s population. This means that it has overtaken even the nation with a population seven-times bigger than it and the curve on this graph of poverty keeps increasing by every year, every month, every week and every day.
In Nigeria, out of the number of people discovered to be living in abject poverty, 80% of them are found in the northern part of the nation. This is the same region of the country that has provided 8 different presidents since the time of the nation’s independence making them the highest in office. So, it is not a situation with the excuse of power not getting to the region so they could not implement necessary projects to help eradicate the high level of poverty. Then the question remains what exactly went wrong?
There are so many factors responsible for the increasing rate of poverty in that region. The first is the incapability of elected politicians to implement human development projects to better the standard of living of their people, this has led to other micro situations like lack of lucrative jobs, absence of well-structured schools to equip citizens mentally to fend for themselves or even become creative to find a solution. Another is the cultural practices of families giving out their daughter at an early age for marriage without proper education for both the husband and her spouse. These would most times generate into the man getting more wives and giving birth to a lot of kids. Remember he has no job other than the subsistence farming he does that is not even enough to feed the family not to talk of selling his harvests to generate income. The circle continues, nativity rate increases without necessary amenities to attend to their needs leaving them at the mercy of begging and illegal acts to feed themselves and their families. Poverty also makes these young people become vulnerable to being recruited by terrorist organizations such as Boko haram not because they intend to join but because poverty has a way of dealing with its victims in all ramifications. Most especially, poverty has been responsible for an increased mortality rate in the nation.
Let’s return back to the first paragraph and pick the definition of the word virus. Using the ICT related definition, a virus is a piece of code that is capable of copying itself and typically has a detrimental effect, such as corrupting the system or destroying data. The definition has some similarities with the above-mentioned situation in Nigeria. We can all imagine the detrimental effect poverty has caused on Nigerians, the effects are so enormous that it has indeed corrupted the entire system. This has become one of the reasons for the stagnant growth of the entire nation.
At this point you would agree with me that indeed poverty is a virus, eating up not just the entire nation but the world. Just as coronavirus is doing at the moment, but then pause for a minute and ask yourself some simple questions about the approach to these different viruses. Why is one getting so much attention globally than the other? Even though they both cause death, suffering, isolation, depression and lots more.
conclusively, the hunger virus kills about 8,000 children a day and the vaccine for it exists, is called “food”, but you wouldn’t hear so much of that in the media, do you know why? Because “hunger doesn’t kill the rich.
Very bad dear brother..