AQUINNO VOLUME 4 ISSUE 2 JUNE 2024.cdr NAPEP: A TRI-CAUSAL EXPLANATION OF WHY IT FAILED Anas Elochukwu The Confucius Institute, NnamdiAzikiwe University, Akwa. Abstract National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP)—the flagship of Nigeria's efforts to realize the UN's millennium development goal on extreme poverty and hunger—coordinated federal government-funded poverty reduction projects from 2001 to 2014.It replaced Poverty Alleviation Programme (PAP) which had been created in 2000.The appellative shift from “poverty alleviation” to “poverty eradication” must have created an illusion of renewed determination to reduce the country's hunger and poverty statistics. NAPEP was generously funded; still it failed to be recognizably different from its predecessors. In fact, the number of Nigerians who slipped into poverty during its years increased rather than decreased. The paper discusses the three main reasons for the failure, namely broad-based approach (universalism), state capture (corruption) and beneficiary exclusion. Its goal is to problematize poverty reduction efforts in developing countries. Keywords: National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP), Nigeria, Poverty Alleviation Programme (PAP), broad-based approach (universalism), state capture (corruption), beneficiary exclusion. Introduction Poverty is one of the challenges mankind has been grappling with since creation. Modern man has surpassed the achievements of the preceding generations, turning deserts into luxuriant farmlands, contracting distance, bridging seas and tunnelling mountains, cloning animals, increasing life expectancy, turning oceans, space and the polar regions into research fields, curing or retarding hitherto incurable ailments, etc. He, however, has been unable to eradicate poverty. Poverty inheres in inhuman existence. It has dogged man since the dawn of time. The Bible declared many thousand years ago in the following verse that it is a concomitant of human existence: “There will always be poor people in the land” (Deuteronomy15 :11). Povertyis one of the fundamental challenges of contemporary world. Stories about its havoc in Africa, Latin America and Asia saturate information channels. According to Lerman, “Today, we live with more awareness and concern about global poverty than at any time in our world's history. More than ever, people can see or read about swollen stomachs of hungry African children, 11 year-old Asian children working in sweatshops, and Haitian families living in mud huts without medical care, electricity, or clean water. At the same time, many of the richest people are global celebrities. Poverty can no longer be kept secret and neither can prodigious wealth” (2002). It is a recurrent theme in development discourse. It is also a trigger for street protest, a priority on legislative agenda, a motivation for philanthropy, a subject of exhortation and denunciation in a diversity of religions, etc. st The United Nations entered 21 century,brandishinga two-phase agenda to eradicate poverty and hunger during the first thirty years of the century. The first stage, launched in 2000, sought to 166 halve both the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day and the number of people suffering from hunger by 2015. The second stage, launched in 2015, seeks to end poverty and hunger by 2030. Despite all the resources it sank into NAPEP, the flagship of its poverty reduction efforts during the fifteen years of the UN's Millennium Development Goals, Nigeria was among the African and Asian countries that were unable to halve their poverty statistics by 2015. T h i s paper discusses three of the factors that thwarted NAPEP, namely broad-based approach, state capture (corruption), and the marginalization of intended beneficiaries in the formulation and implementation of projects. Poverty in Nigeria has been onexpansion modesince the country became independent of British rule in 1960. The statistical increase is due to a diversity of factors. One of the factors is the failure of founding leaders to change the orientation of the economy they inherited from the British: “At independence, Nigeria, like most African countries, followed the line of least resistance and largely continued colonies policies. In agriculture this meant the promotion of selected export crops such as cocoa, groundnuts, and palm produce” (Ake, 1996). Nigeria is an interesting case study in“the paradox of plenty”. Its landscape is one vast ocean of poverty dotted with is lets of affluence. Because the mass of its citizenry lives below breadline despite the generosity of its natural resources, it has been described as “a prime example of the curse that natural resources can bring” (Mahler, 2010). Its alarmingly high poverty rate mocks its ranking as Africa's largest economy and a major oil producer. 70% of its citizenry live on less than $1.25 a day (World Bank, 2014a). There are three obvious facts about its poverty. Firstly, as the following tables indicate, the proportion of the citizenry sliding into poverty has been increasing rather than decreasing. Table 1: Nigeria's poverty, 1980-2010 (World Bank, 2014a) Table 2: Nigeria's urban and rural poverty rates, 1980-2010 (World Bank, 2014a) Year Total national population (millions) % of poverty 1980 65.0 28.1 1985 75.0 46.3 1992 91.5 42.7 1996 102.5 65.6 2004 126.3 54.4 2010 163.0 69.0 Year Urban Rural 1980 17.2 28.3 1985 37.8 51.4 1992 37.5 46.0 1996 58.2 69.8 2004 43.2 63.3 2010 61.8 73.2 167 Aquino Journal of Philosophy, Vol 4 Issue 2, June 2024. ISSN: 2786-9792 Secondly, its poverty geography indicates that 66% of the poor live in the northern part of the country(World Bank, 2014). It is ironic that decades of northern domination of national politics have failed to reduce poverty in the north. Thirdly, there are more poor people in the rural areas than there are in the cities (World Bank, 2014a). Poverty Reduction Programmes The following are Nigeria's major poverty reduction programmes since its independence in 1960:River Basin Development Authorities (RBDAs), National Accelerated Food Production Programme (NAFPP), Agricultural Development Programmes (ADPs), Operation Feed the Nation (OFN), Green Revolution, Directorate for Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure(DFRRI), National Directorate of Employment (NDE), People's Bank of Nigeria (PBN), Better Life for Rural Women Programme (BL), Family Support Programme/Family Economic Advancement Programme (FSP/FEAP), Poverty Alleviation Programme/National Poverty Eradication Programme (PAP/NAPEP) and NationalEconomic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS).Maryam Babangida and Maryam Abacha pioneered the feminization of poverty reduction in the country, founding BL and FSP/FEAP which, being gender-biased, pursued affirmative action for the womenfolk. The fact that the country's poverty rate has been increasing rather than decreasing indicates that the programmes all failed (Obadan, 2002). Former minister Nasir el-Rufai attributed the failure to non-inclusive economic growth. National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP) National Poverty Eradication Program (NAPEP) emerged in 2001 from the reorganization of Poverty Alleviation Programme (PAP) which had been established in 1999. It had a mandate to inject a minimum of 200,000 jobs into the labour market annually. Fourteen ministries, namely agriculture/ rural development, education, water resources, industry, power/steel, employment/labour/productivity, women affairs/youth development, health, works/housing, environment, solid minerals development, science/technology, finance and national planning commission participated in the implementation of its mandate. It focused on four core areas, namely youth empowerment, rural infrastructure development, social welfare and natural resources development and conservation. The need to align the country's anti-poverty efforts with the UN's proclamation against extreme poverty and hunger might have induced the appellative switch from “poverty alleviation” to “poverty eradication”. Olusegun Obasanjo became President at the time the UN was finalizing the launch of the Millennium Development Goals. Poverty was on his hit list and he had begun his assault on it with this declaration in his maiden budget speech: [Poverty] must be seen, by every one of us, as a major source of embarrassment that over 70 per cent of our population live below the poverty line. This is in spite of the abundant natural and human resources that has been bestowed on our great nation. One of the major issues that this administration has undertaken to resolve is this lingering poverty that has stricken our people along the length and breadth of the nation. The extent of poverty has reached frightening proportions primarily due to the neglect of past governments (1999). He was a farmer. His Ota Farms at Abeokuta was a testament to his commitment to poverty eradication through food security. Operation Feed the Nation (OFN) which his military regime launched in 1976 sought to imbue the country with the autogenic capacity to feed itself. During 168 Elochukwu NAPEP: A Tri-causal Explanation Of Why It Failed his civilian Presidency(1999-2007), he collaborated with Thabo Mbeki, Abdelazeez Bouteflika and Abdoulaye Wade to found the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). He underscored his commitment to poverty eradication by personally chairing the National Poverty Eradication Council (NAPEC), which formulated and coordinated NAPEP's activities, and whose membership included top government officials such as Vice-President, Secretary to Government of the Federation and ministers. In effect, NAPEP wasdirectly supervised by the President. Presidential supervision ensured that it received privileged attention and budgetary allocations. It, however, could not make it remarkably different from its predecessor, namely PAP. As the above tables indicated, the country's poverty statistics did not improve during the thirteen years the programme was in operation. Public awareness of the programme's existence was almost limited to the visual ubiquity of Indian-made tricycles popularly known in local parlance askeke NAPEP. El-Rufai (This Day, 2015) stated that the programme abandoned its mandate and became “a sales agent for Indian-made Bajaj tricycles.” Keke NAPEP has played a major role in expanding India's economic footprint in Nigeria. Those Nigerians, who used its importation and sale to enrich themselves, instigated the ban on commercial motorcycle transport ('okada' in Nigerian parlance)in many parts of the country. The ban worsened unemployment and crime statistics in the country (Ojo, 2011). Most Okada transporters could not afford the tricycle because of prohibitive price. Why did NAPEP fail? Many factors thwarted NAPEP, but only three of them are considered in the present paper. Firstly, NAPEP pursued a patently impracticable ambition by adopting the broad-based approach, loosely targeting its beneficiaries and operating an unsegmented timescale. For any anti-povertyprogramme to succeed, it must target specific groups and regions. It also must operate within time segments. The anti-poverty programmes of those countries that were able to halve their poverty statistics by2015did those two things. Poverty is a phenomenon that displays group and geographical differentials. In ethnically diverse countries, it generally is a minority phenomenon. For example, in 2010 Vietnam's ethnic minorities who constituted less than 15% of the total national population accounted for 47% of the poor and 68% of the extreme poor (World Bank, 2012). In geographically vast countries, it generally is a topographic phenomenon. For example, in China it is concentrated in mountainous areas. Since distance from the poverty line varies among groups and geographies, targeting groups and geographies is strongly recommended. Universal (broad-based) approach which NAPEP adopted could only impact a small segment of the country's vast poverty spectrum. Targeting (the narrow-based approach), which espouses affirmative action for certain groups, regions, began to displace the universal approach as a development tool during the 1980s (Mkandawire, 2005).Its virtues include efficiency in the deployment of exhaustible resources in poverty eradication(Besley& Kanbur,1990; Coady, Grosh &Hoddinnot, 2004; Mkandawire, 2005). According to Madavo and Sarbib, “For poverty reduction programs to be successful, it is necessary to explore creative solutions that will allow the governments of these countries to target their limited resources to the most needy [sic], and to use these resources in the most effective way. Programs that cover a country's entire population…are no longer sustainable…[T]he need for effective targeted programs that provide significant support to the poor within the tightening budget constraints has become more apparent than ever” (2000).Similarly, since most successful poverty reduction programmes have been implemented piecemeal, time segmentation is strongly recommended. Unsegmented timescale can encumber impact assessment. Corruption was the other factor that 169 Aquino Journal of Philosophy, Vol 4 Issue 2, June 2024. ISSN: 2786-9792 thwarted NAPEP. Anti-poverty programmes in many developing countries are “distorted by long-entrenched patron-client relations or “clientelism,” in party politics”(Diaz-Cayeros, Estevez &Magaloni, 2012).Government has a tendency to use them to lubricate the machinery of party politics. State capture of NAPEP had three important dimensions. Firstly, most of the programme's strategic departments were manned by members of the ruling party, PDP. For example, while its career officers were federal civil servants, state coordinators were political appointees(Lawal&Umar, 2012). The director-general and state coordinators were members of the People's Democratic Party (PDP), the party that ruled the country from 1999 to 2015. Expectedly, those appointees were beholden to their benefactors (Ugoh & Ukpere, 2009).Cronyism, without doubt, starved the programme of technocratic efficiency. Secondly, the beneficiary registers were rigged and stuffed with phantom and false beneficiaries. Phantom beneficiaries were the front used by the state captors to corruptly benefit from the programme, while false beneficiaries were those who were not actually poor but who still benefitted from the programme on account of close ties with the captors.(Certain beneficiaries of the programme's conditional cash transfer from the author's village were civil servants). Most of the poverty loans were not repaidsince the beneficiaries regarded them as “a gift” (Danjuma, 2013).Thirdly,the programme was instrumentalized against political opponents. State coordinators committed enormously to the federal government's efforts to dislodge Opposition governors like Bola Tinubu and Peter Obi. In short, the programme was weaponized and used to curb the Opposition. Politicization is a common plague of discretionary programmes. As noted by Diaz-Cayeros, Estevez &Magaloni (2012), “discretionary programs give politicians the ability to withdraw benefits on the basis of electoral criteria or for political motivation, such as when a beneficiary fails to vote for the incumbent or an election cycle is over.” The appointment of Tony Anenihas the pioneer head of the programme must have set the stage for its politicization. The third factor was the marginalization of intended beneficiaries in the formulation and implementation of projects. Beneficiary participation has many virtues. For example, involving people in the design, management, and evaluation of projects that would benefit them enhances results (World Bank, 2000).Also, it saves beneficiaries the indignities of objectification and treatment as passive recipients of relief programmes (IIED, 2010). Beneficiary participation is of such importance that disregard for it is considered a dimension of poverty (World Bank, 2000). Some beneficiaries of Keke NAPEP were graduates who would have preferred to borrow to start their own business, but who were constrained by a lack of collateral to patronize the exploitative hire-purchase arrangement. Many people forfeited their tricycles when they fell into arrears with the arrangement. Conclusion NAPEP was an ambitious effort by the Obasanjo administration to trigger a paradigm shift in poverty reduction efforts in Nigeria. One of the most ambitious poverty reduction programmes in Nigeria, it lasted twelve years, straddled three administrations and was indulged by the Presidency. Despite the amplitude of budgetary and bureaucratic attention it received from the government, it “failed to deliver on its mandate.” The fact that the country missed the UN's deadline on halving extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 was evidence of the failure. The present paper considers broad-based approach, state capture (corruption) and beneficiary exclusion the three major reasons why it failed. Poverty in Nigeria, like in China, is still concentrated in the rural area, hence the need for Nigeria 170 Elochukwu NAPEP: A Tri-causal Explanation Of Why It Failed to learn the following lessons in poverty reduction from China. Firstly, loan is no longer a major component of China's rural poverty reduction efforts. Instead of loan, government may give villagers, particularly those in mountainous regions, fowls, goats or cows so that they could set up in animal husbandry. According to China Daily, “Though the money value of a goat or a cow may seem just like a drop in the ocean when compared with the hefty central budget on poverty relief, it could make or break a family. In some extreme cases, free access to animal husbandry would be the only lifeline for the poor villagers to climb out of poverty” (2017). This strategy seeks to empower beneficiaries through economic systems they are familiar with. Rural economy is so rudimentary villagers may find it difficult to handle loans and conditional cash transfers. Where loans are provided, they mostly go to cooperatives and measures are taken to:(1) ensure they are used for production, not consumption (2) prevent leakages and capture by non-poor (3) minimize risk of delinquency. Secondly, it involves embedment, whereby government station work teams in the rural areas to administer rural administration and monitor poverty reduction programmes. Work teams may help villagers to form cooperatives. For example, in 2015, the work team in Shibadong in Hunan province “persuaded villagers to pool the relief funds provided by the government---about 6,000 yuan per person---and some of their own money to form partnership with an agricultural company to start kiwi plantation” (Liu, 2017). Cooperatives engage in many ventures such as farming scorpions, cockroaches or bamboo rats which are sold to pharmaceutical companies or are eaten as delicacies. Nigeria had a similar arrangement whereby, until the mid-1980s, agricultural extension officers were stationed in the villages. Thirdly, it gives infrastructure development high priority (ADB, 2004). For example, the country thplans to spend $120billionon rural road construction during the 13 Five-Year Plan (2016- 2020).The Food-for-Work programme (FFW), which provides funding for rural infrastructure construction (World Bank, 2001),utilizes surplus farm labour to develop infrastructure in poverty-stricken areas (Wang, Yanshun & Zhou, 2004). Under FFW, villagers are compelled to participate in building infrastructure projects such as roads and irrigation in their villages. Most rural areas operate “work day contribution system” whereby each villager is “obligated to work a certain number of days annually” (World Bank, 2001). Under certain circumstances, money, instead of labour, might be acceptable. One of the major problems with this metaphor for labour conscription is that villagers might lack the requisite technical skills. Fourthly, it uses short-term approach. Target periods are usually divided into short time periods. For example, there were three time periods during the fifteen years of MDGs, which tagged three five-year development plans---2001-2005, 2006-2010 and 2011-2015. Before the MDGs, there were the 1986-1993 period, the 8-7 Plan (1993-2000) which targeted the 80 million poor people left behind during the 1986-1993 period, the Outline for Poverty Reduction and Development of China's Rural Areas (2001-2010) which targeted 50,000 villages most of which are located in those non-poor counties that were excluded from the 8-7 Plan and the Outline for Development- oriented Poverty Reduction for China's Rural Areas (2011-2020). Nigeria does not have such a practicable time arrangement, hence its attempt to eradicate poverty in one fell swoop. Fifthly, it prioritizes the participatory approach. Beneficiary interest in a project is almost assured if the beneficiaries are involved in its formulation and implementation. Village committees participate in the selection, formulation and implementation of rural projects in their villages(World Bank, 2001). In contrast, many poverty reduction programmes in Nigeria are imposed upon the intended beneficiaries. For example, the government may decide to build a bridge even when what the village needs urgently is a borehole. 171 Aquino Journal of Philosophy, Vol 4 Issue 2, June 2024. ISSN: 2786-9792 Sixthly, it encourages reverse migration. County governments offer incentives such as loan and tax rebate to urban dwellers who voluntarily quit the city in order to invest in the rural economy. This strategy focuses on graduates since they have the expertiseto create jobs for unskilled or semi-skilled villagers. Returnees engage in ventures such as cockroach, scorpion or fungus farming ande-business. They also help villagers form cooperatives to produce and sell farm produce (Chen, 2017). 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