kikero:


Exactly.

Countries like Saudi Arabia and Libya(under Ghaddafi) operated by that policy. They are poor countries which appear rich because of high oil incomes and low populations.

If Saudi was 200-300million people in size, they would have been as broke as we are.

The problem with Nigeria is that Nigerians expect government to share money for them. Because...we are poor. The truth is, if we had invested the money we earned since independence in improving our productive capacity ie on power, rail transport, technical education...we might have been in a better place by now. Many of these our big men would have even been richer now

Omooba77:
By Abimbola Adelakun

Everything about Nigeria is only on paper. Giant of Africa too on paper. 190 million population too still on paper. I am not surprised at this.

https://punchng.com/why-are-nigerians-still-so-poor/

Anigreat:

Our selfish and self centered leaders has finished us all.
God punish them

j1mmy:


Total rubbish.
The number one reason is primitive and backward citizens mentality.
-Have more children than they and the country can feed.
-spend most of their time attributing everything to god and religion instead of living off the land and innovating
-playing colo mentality with government and foreigners in the country, making it easy to be exploited
-believing in silly things like juju and religion that dont contribute much to their lives except detraction, expenses and waste of time.

tempem:
Nicely written!
However, I think in a bit to tackle varying aspects, you've drifted off the goal of the article... From food scarcity to writing obituaries to Kyari... I feel you should have written about these individually.

SeverusSnape:
It's now a known fact that the government of the day is a scam led by the most mendacious scammer in the history of Nigeria.

Bubu the mumu.

seguno2:


Nigerians are doomed.

j1mmy:


Total rubbish.
The number one reason is primitive and backward citizens mentality.
-Have more children than they and the country can feed.
-spend most of their time attributing everything to god and religion instead of living off the land and innovating
-playing colo mentality with government and foreigners in the country, making it easy to be exploited
-believing in silly things like juju and religion that dont contribute much to their lives except detraction, expenses and waste of time.

PericomaNwankwo:
Poor because the government have refused to do its job.

Poor because the people have a low Human Development Index which is very evident in their choice of leaders, their inability to act like a nation with a common purpose and revolt when needed, but in Nigeria, people are okay with a bad leader because he is from their region.

Poor because even the little effort of the citizens are not compensated from the government due to its inability to put up a "at least basic infrastructure".

Poor because the people are as bad as their leaders. I always maintain that leaders were once part of the people and when the people are good, it becomes easier to elect good leaders because leaders are elected from the populace.

Poor because they have refused to empower its people. If they had given loans to the southerners to do their business and gave them the same benefit they gave others, we won't cry against RUGA because every tribe have what they are known for. In Igbo: " ndi owuna were ihe ha ji biri".

Usorohtheman:
Over religious is one of the reason.

SLAP44:

That's savage

Tonero2162:
Nigerians deserve whatever they get and I'm serious about it. I rather buy 400 000 naira fuel for my car than to waste that on ungrateful people

Philinho:
Because we as a nation hardly learn.... Look at who we voted

Tonero2162:
Nigerians deserve whatever they get and I'm serious about it. I rather buy 400 000 naira fuel for my car than to waste that on ungrateful people

Farki:
Nigeria is poor because a few elite individuals and their families and associates are controlling most of the money in this country. They appoint yes men into offices through their parties and manipulate the laws to silence those who oppose them.

Where politicians would rather spend on themselves rather than the citizens. When things aren't functioning as a result of their neglect they then go abroad for schooling and healthcare.

Then educated Nigerians seeing the rot of their country will try any and every means to leave the country and give their productivity to other nations. This is why you see Nigerians performing well abroad while the country is a mess.

Daum:
.
Because the Nigerian system encourages poverty by deliberately making the populace less educated and systematically creating an unhealthy environment for the few educated ones to thrive.

jamace:


Religiosity without godliness is a BIG SCAM.

Lyoncrescent:
Being poor is multidimensional and not limited to food alone and can be analysed different ways. I want to focus on Security, Health, Education and Food Security.

All these things are elitist.

If you are a VIP or a multimillionaire, just go and see your DPO and he can give you two police men to be following you around. We see it everywhere. The police is poorly trained and poorly paid and has poor investigation mechanism and structures. First role of government is securing life and property but even that they have failed and we are all victims .

If you are a VIP again , you will have access to the best hospitals and not the government rubbish ones . Even some government hospitals have private wards for VIP and rich patients and those ones are treated so highly that you won't believe that it's the same hospital. In a developed nation , health is key but here even the president runs to London when he has a health crisis. Even the middle class is not spared in the poor nature of the health sector.

Education is a tragedy. No one that has a choice will send their children to a public primary school which is the foundation. In developed nations , public primary education is the rule while private primary education is the exception while in Nigeria it is the other way around . However FG will say the school feeding program that gulps 600 million naira daily has been a success and that primary school education is not under the FG ; in other words we can feed them but we can't equip their classrooms or pay their teachers because it's not our job. And the rot is all the way to tertiary level. With the exception of Lagos Business school, no MBA program in Nigeria meets international standards of any of AMBA, EQUIS and AACSB. It's all poor.

Food security is in shambles. Why is it so expensive to transport food from Kano to Lagos ? No one has been able to answer this question. Why are incentives not given to food production and processing companies so that we all benefit one way or the other ? It's beyond me .

Nigeria is a clueless nation . When they came with surep and you win , I said nothing will change and that it will only set a dangerous precedence. Then they came again with npower , trade moni and cash transfer. Yet another misplaced priority. This schemes are supposed to be the icing on the cake; Additional initiatives to a core initiative. However there is little or no cake. Nigeria is spending more on icing than the main cake . We spend so much on helping the poor with tokenism while neglecting the core of Security,Health, Education and Food Security.

At the end of the day, we are all poor including the elites and the rich. We never know when we will be victims of this poor system. When a wayward and poor policeman may out of frustration kill a family relation, when a niece may be rushed to a teaching hospital with pregnancy complications and the doctor on call will be in his own private hospital , when the children we refused to educate will kidnap us and when lack of standards will result to us consuming poisoned beans in our mansions . In the end , being rich and living in a poor system means we are all poor .

This rot is not limited to the Federal Government. State Governors are even worse and if I use Lagos state as a case study, we won't leave here today. God help Nigeria.