By Bala Muhammad
Weekly Trust- 17th December, 2011

On Thursday, youths from South South Nigeria blockaded the Okene-Lokoja-Abuja highway, essentially the artery linking North and South Nigeria. What the youths wanted of the Federal government was simple: “Include us in the [apparently lucrative] Amnesty Programme initiated by late President Yar’Adua.” And the message from Government was equally simple: “You are nice, good, well-behaved boys. You never took up arms against the fatherland, you never kidnapped any ‘whites’, you burst no pipeline. Therefore, you don’t deserve any compensation.”

Twelve years ago, a certain North Western State re-introduced Shari’ah, in limbo for almost a century since the British overrun Sokoto in 1903. Some of the first ‘beneficiaries’ of the Shari’ah system were so-called ‘women of easy virtue’ who had taken to anti-social living. Each one of them, if memory serves me right, was offered a Twenty-Thousand-Naira ‘settlement’ to mend their ways and return to social-acceptability.

Like the non-militants of Thursday, a certain housewife in the Shari’ah state (a virtuous woman all her life ma sha Allah), went on the local radio station and challenged the state government: “I have been, for almost fifty years, a dutiful wife and mother, never once abandoning my family. What is my own reward?” The answer from Government seemed simple enough: “Being that you have been so spiritual all your life, temporal compensation is not for you. Wait for the divine.”

Then in many states, youths had taken to drugs and were terrorising, nay, murdering and maiming, innocent people. In at least three of such states, the governments devised an ingenious way of enticing these murderous marauding youths off their behavioural crises. Various sums of monthly allowances (and sometimes outright payments) were offered to buy off these thugs. For some time, it worked. But then it opened the door to another, bigger problem: good kids who had NOT taken to drugs and had NOT killed or maimed anyone found that, paradoxically, to be bad was good, and to be good was bad in the reckoning of Nigerian governments. And so they asked: “What is our reward for being such goody-two-shoes?” (assuming the thugs were barefooted).

So we ask, what type of country is it that you get almost nothing out of it until you take up arms against it, or you go against social norms, or you become a drugged murdering marauder? The millions of others who live on the straight and narrow are being told one singular message; it is foolhardy not to follow the crooked and wide. This is a serious moral crisis, and until something is done about it quickly, we could be in the danger of inviting goody-two-shoes to ditch their sandals and go astray, in a bid to be ‘recognised’ and ‘compensated’.

This serious moral crisis facing us has one solution; a comprehensive social security system to protect the vulnerable in society: women, orphans, the unemployed, the physically-challenged, and those millions of young school dropouts who have no work and no job and no occupation. (No work because they or their parents have abandoned the rural for the urban areas; no job because, with F9s all over their school certificates, they are not qualified for any but the most menial, which they will not humble themselves to do; no occupation for mind body and spirit, except Arsenal and Barcelona, and Acaba/Okada.)

No wonder then that some of our thoughtless politicians, including political leaders, engage these murdering, marauding youths for personal vendettas against others. When this Columnist had a voice in his state of origin, he used to tell these youths that: “Whoever wants you to kill or maim an opponent, let him first bring his own son (who, invariably, is in school in Dubai, Malaysia or Ghana) to lead you do it.” Alas! They hearkened not, because they are usually too high to hearken! Beasts of Nigeria!

That said, back in April 2009, the Yar’Adua Administration empanelled a Committee to design a Social Security Policy for the nation. The Committee, which had as its Chairman former Head of State General Yakubu Gowon, did its work and submitted its report to Government. Sadly, with the demise of President Yar’Adua, the Committee’s report seemed to have died with him.

In an Open Memo to the Committee, this Column had suggested adapting at least a segment of Bolsa Familia, Brazil’s highly successful social security system. Roughly translated as ‘Family Grant’, Bolsa Familia was launched in October 2003 by former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The programme provides financial aid to poor and indigent Brazilian families on condition that the children must attend school and be vaccinated, and the mother must visit ante-natal clinics when pregnant. By the end of Silva’s first term in 2007, the programme was credited with drastic reduction of poverty in Brazil, which remarkably fell 27.7%!

Collaterally, because children were in school, more teachers’ colleges were established to produce more teachers, child labour was reduced, and the numbers of Street Children (‘Area Boys’, a serious social issue in Brazil) were drastically reduced. And because children were being vaccinated and expectant mothers were frequenting hospitals, there was demand for more doctors and more were produced. Again, because more people had disposable income, the economy churned out growth in almost all sectors. Bolsa Familia essentially became what the Hausa-Fulani call Nagge-Dadi-Goma (literally, a cow has multiple benefits – milk, butter, beef, hide, hoof, horn, manure, ganda/ponmo, cowhead and cowtail peppersoups).

Will The Abuja Consensus (disciples of the Washington Consensus who design and run our economic and monetary policies) allow a social security system, or call it ‘a system to make people lazier’? Don’t they know that the very same countries they copy – in North America and Europe – have exactly the same programme in place for decades, if not centuries? If The Abuja Consensus would take billions of our sinking Naira to bail out banks (the chief executives of which had bought Dubai blind), there is no reason why they should not invest in reforming militancy, easing easy virtue and salving druggedness.

For Brazil’s programme, success has sparked adaptations in almost 20 countries—including Chile, Mexico, Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey, and Morocco. More recently, New York City announced its “Opportunity NYC”, a conditional transfer of income programme modelled on Brazil’s Bolsa Familia. This is an example of a developed country adopting and learning from the experiences in the so-called developing world.

Brazil is very similar to Nigeria (except in electricity where Brazil has 110,000 Megawatts compared to Nigeria’s 4,000). It has a population of 190 million, compared to Nigeria’s 167; it has 26 states, we have 36; it has a Federal District, Brasilia, with five regions, we have Abuja Federal Capital Territory with six local government areas. Brazil has great inequalities, much as Nigeria has. Now, if Brazil can do it, and Indonesia and New York can adopt it, there is no reason why Nigeria cannot. Why wouldn’t our Transformers be Adaptors as well? Don’t all Transformers have them Adaptors?