THE RICH, THE POOR AND THE OKAY (1)

The rich, the poor and the okay (1) Back in school, one of my teachers, Professor Oni once said “the concept poverty is multi-dimensional, not having a specific definition.” The late Professor Aboyade in 1972 at a guest lecture described poverty “as an elephant that could be easily recognized than defined”. Economists unanimously view poverty as a state of low income and consumption. One fact which has been noticed pertaining to world nations is that rapid economic growth has failed to eliminate widespread absolute poverty due to its failure in exhibiting a trickle-down effect to the average man. Nigeria has been averaging growth of 6% and I ask if that has reduced the percentage of the poor in the country? A new concept of growth has indeed been proposed, tagged as “inclusive growth” to capture the need for economic growth to be effected on the average poor. Analysts have emphasized that the poor distribution of the wealth obtained from the country has further contributed to the widening income gap between the rich and the poor. Psychologists on the other hand see poverty from the angle of deprivations. This therefore infer us to believe that one could be physically poor, mentally poor, materially poor, and emotionally poor and so on. However we must identify five (5) key forms of deprivation viz.: a)Economic: Economic resources have been said to be scarce, therefore the allocation of scarce resources in various sets of economies ensures that a certain proportion of individuals are left with minimal amount of certain resource. This proportion would be minimal in command economies; b)Political: in this era of democracy, every individual is entitled to certain rights and such rights does not preclude his choice in the field of politics which involves one’s enfranchisement; c)Social: denial of social life with emphasis on association and relations; d)Physical: denial of access to basic social goods such as education, health, shelter and food; and e)Cultural: unappreciativeness of one’s culture and way of life.