Mahatma Gandhi said: “Poverty is the worst form of violence”. I agree. For every election rigged in Africa, for every politician that has risen through to power, the poverty of the people was the ladder upon which he rose. This is violent. Subtle, but violent. I will explain using Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
This is a theory in psychology that explains human motivation through five levels of human needs. He argues that, like behaviour and natural intelligences, what motivates you is unique to you and is a combination of your natural motivations and your current social status.
From the bottom of the hierarchy upwards, the needs are:
•Physiological Needs - including Food, Water, Shelter.
•Safety Needs - Security, Order, Law.
•Social Needs - Love and Belonging.
•Esteem Needs - Achievement, Independence, Prestige.
•Self-actualization Needs - Personal Growth, Self-fulfillment and so on.
The catch is that needs lower down in the hierarchy must be satisfied before individuals can attend to needs higher. So that a man who has not adequately satisfied the physiological needs of food, water and shelter would have no business with esteem needs of achievement or prestige. It always takes that progression. When we apply this to poverty and political choices, we understand why the poverty of the people is to the advantage of the politician. Their poverty is the ladder upon which he rises to the achievement of his egregious ambitions.
Poor people usually cannot see beyond their poverty. It is only a man that has had food to eat that will care about democracy or demand accountability from public officials. It is only one who has had his basic needs met that would care about free and fair elections. Basically, these primary needs have to be met to an extent before one can move up the ladder in demand. Politicians understand this and have continued to exploit this fact over the years.
Hence, the political instrument of poverty remains a valuable gambit in the war chest of the politician. If you can keep the people poor enough, you can get them to do anything for you at the price of peanuts. This is the reason why Nigerians will continue to accept money in exchange for their votes in elections. A civil servant who has not received his salary for months, with a family barely surviving will most likely not think twice to accept cash at the voting booth in exchange for his vote. “A vote that does not count”, he would say to himself.
This is why bags of rice and galons of groundnut oil distributed by Politicians every four years will continue to determine electoral choices in Nigeria. Nigerians will gladly sing praises to the thief in Agbada, who steals billions of their money in Constituency allocations as long as he can provide them with bags of rice and other perishables. The people are still stuck in the needs of the belly! The people are poor! Kept poor, deliberately by the ruling class. I sound Marxist now. But truly, poverty is the real reason why individuals will vigorously defend a government that is evil and obviously anti-people, just because they will be paid. Poverty is the real issue!
The problems of vote commodification, sycophancy and other issues of our democracy today lie here - in the fact that the people are too poor to think beyond the present into generations ahead.
Any government that is serious about deepening democracy in Nigeria will take the fight against poverty more seriously.
© Ifeanyi Chukwudi
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