Peter Obi’s Manifesto is disingenuous and ImPOssible -A look at Multidimensional Poverty

Let me state from the onset that I do not believe that Peter Obi has either the competence or the capacity to be President of Nigeria and at this critical stage of Nigeria’s development in particular, PO is not what we need as we do not have the luxury of experimenting with an unprepared and/or accidental candidate. However, since he is one of the contenders for the post of president of our dear nation, it behoves on public commentators such as myself to assess the man through his offerings and the best place to start is to critically evaluate his manifesto which I have finally been able to lay my hands on. I will be doing this in bits, section by section and this write up starts with the Introductory part of the Obi/Datti document pages 7-11 subtitled “Context” 

The context reads like a horror story and is pretty depressing. PO/Datti see no hope whatsoever in this country where both of them have excelled, one as a container economist, the other an ‘edupreneur’. The manifesto, apart from being sad and gloomy is riddled with deliberate misinformation especially in the use of data. PO/Datti are selective with data and have a deliberate exculpatory motive of distancing PO from the evils he claims beset Nigeria. Obi picks 2015 as the period where Nigeria’s developmental difficulties started, thereby ignoring his former party, the PDP’s ruination of the Nigerian state for 16 continuous years and his part in it. 

It is a character flaw of Obi to be dishonest with data. This has been his hallmark from the moment he launched his curious campaign and perhaps even long before that. There is no point lying to Nigerians that you aspire to lead and it makes no sense to keep saying that the current administration has failed. It is disingenuous and smacks of unseriousness. It shows an inability to be analytical and to original. 2015 was not the start of banditry and insurgencies that Nigeria is plagued with. Prior to 2015, the insecurity in Nigeria was rife up to a point where the nation had lost many LGAs to Boko Haram who had even hoisted their flags on Nigerian territory. Obi can talk about new insurgencies and new challenges, but to ignore the facts that history records that insurgency started during the years of the PDP, and to start a manifesto in context of lies is a travesty to democracy. 

Then, Obi picks poverty data with stealth, he disingenuously equates multidimensional poverty with monetary poverty (headcount poverty) and he declares that 63% of Nigerians are poor. I know that Obi/Datti did not develop their manifesto, so it is even more worrisome that Obi’s ‘expert’ team of advisers are this dishonest, because surely this cannot be a factor of incompetence with data analysis, but a deliberate attempt to obfuscate the terrain. The poverty headcount rate of Nigeria as at the last data published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in 2018/19 is 40.1% and not 63% that Obi insidiously averred. The World Bank projected that with the COVID and the continued population increase in Nigeria, the poverty headcount may not reduce and projected a growth to 42% in 2020 and 42.6 percent in 2022. At no time did anyone refer to 63% poverty headcount, but PO in his manifesto crafted in deceit, deliberately did not mention that his 63% was on what the NBS calls ‘multidimensional’ poverty and not headcount monetary poverty. 

The FGN through the NBS released what is said to be its most extensive national measure of multidimensional poverty in November 2022. PO latched on this without understanding the context and meaning of the data. We need to examine how multidimensional poverty is different form monetary poverty and why the difference matters?

Multidimensional poverty is unique in that it is a deep dive into the factors that contribute to poverty. Poverty manifests not just in lack of income, but also in the lack of basic amenities such as access to healthcare, education, water and adequate sanitation, clean cooking fuels. The NBS categorised these factors into 4, viz; health dimension, education dimension, living standards dimension and work and shock dimension. The respective contributions of each of these categories nationally to the multidimensional poverty index (MPI) are 34.4%, 17.9%, 33.6% and 14.1%. 

The MPI is more of an index for the 36 states of Nigeria that will enable the states understand the factors that contribute to poverty in their respective states and thereby prioritise the targeting of their respective budgets to the four sectors to address the problems. The MPI will also give the FGN context so that when interventions are planned at the Federal level, data can assist to cite appropriate interventions to where they are most needed. Thus the MPI at 63% is not an indicator of headcount poverty and Obi/Datti’s attempt to use this data to assert higher incidence of poverty is dishonest. 

I also find it highly objectionable that Obi/Datti attributed both the headcount poverty and MPI to a failure of the FGN. This worries me because in the attempt to campaign on the premise of “the current administration has failed” and “the people ruling are incompetent” (a point he made so strenuously in his dubious manifesto), PO has shown his own incompetence in that he does not understand the fundamentals of a federation as prescribed by the Constitution and the powers of the FGN vis-à-vis the powers of the State Governors. How on earth can one put the blame of the falling standards of education on the FGN when Education from basic to secondary level falls squarely within the portfolio of the states and even the states participate in tertiary education. How also can one blame the FGN for low quality of health in the states when primary and secondary health care is within the purview of the states and the states also participate in tertiary health care. How can one blame the paucity of housing in the states or even the low quality living standards of citizens on the FGN when it is the job of the Governors of the states to stimulate their respective economies. The FGN does not own lands, only the states do, so mass housing projects can only substantially be facilitated by the states, same with agriculture. 

In the dubious use of the MPI data, Obi ignored the disaggregated data that would have truly aided better analyses. These disaggregated data highlights are as follows: 

1. The National MPI is 0.257, indicating that poor people in Nigeria experience just over one-quarter of all possible deprivations. 

2. 65% of the MPI poor (86 million people) live in the North, while 35% (nearly 47 million) live in the South. 

3. MPI poverty levels across States vary significantly, with the incidence of multidimensional poverty ranging from a low of 27% in Ondo to a high of 91% in Sokoto. 

4. Over half of the population of Nigeria cook with dung, wood or charcoal, rather than cleaner energy. High deprivations are also apparent nationally in sanitation, time to healthcare, food insecurity, and housing. Obi would have been able to tell us how the NNPC privatisation and the Petroleum Industry Act has set in motion the development of the downstream sector for Gas to be the domestic cooking fuel source in Nigeria. 

5. In general, the incidence of monetary poverty is lower than the incidence of multidimensional poverty across most states. In Nigeria, 40.1% of people are poor according to the 2018/19 national monetary poverty line, and 63% are multidimensionally poor according to the National MPI 2022. 

6. Multidimensional poverty is higher in rural areas, where 72% of people are poor, compared to 42% of people in urban areas. 

7. Child poverty is prevalent in rural areas, with almost 90% of rural children experiencing poverty. 

8. Across the geo-political zones, the child MPI shows higher poverty in the North-East and North-West (where 90% of children are poor) and lower poverty in the South-East and South-West (74% and 65.1% respectively). 

9. The incidence of Child MPI is above 50% in all States and greater than 95% in Bayelsa, Sokoto, Gombe and Kebbi.

10. Four million Nigerians – 2.1% of the population – live with a child aged 15–17 who is the first generation in that household to have completed primary school. 

As it has become obvious, data disaggregation offers more useful insight than the ‘patchwork” working to the answer or give a dog a bad name data analysis that Obi/Datti did in the introductory part of their manifesto. Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State for 6 years and thereafter he served on the Goodluck Jonathan Economic Team in the PDP administration. One should ask him why the South East has child poverty of 74% and why Anambra State has not fared well in the MPI. 

I find that Obi’s manifesto does not realise that it needs to address the issue of how he will collaborate with the governors to bring about any improvement in the poverty indicators. Instead of being practical, he assumes that he will rule as an “Emperor” over the country and decree the imPOssible things he has said he will do. This emperor outlook will achieve nothing. In contrast to this outlook, the APC manifesto offers a more realistic plan of collaborating with the states to achieve growth. “A Tinubu administration will rebalance the responsibilities and authorities of the different tiers of government. It will collaborate with the National Assembly and State Governments to amend the national governance architecture such that states are afforded the autonomy and resources needed to better serve the people” And to achieve this objective, Tinubu will “work on reviewing the Constitutional legislative lists to ensure that States are given greater control over certain critical matters. Focus areas will include, crime prevention, prisons, stamp duties and certain forms of taxation. The APC will also embark on a review of the federation revenue allocation system to recalibrate the division of funds amongst the three tiers of Government: Federal, State and Local. More funds should be allocated to the States and Local Governments so that they can better address local concerns and fulfil their expanded constitutional obligations to the people. This promotes stronger governance at the state and local level, thus reducing political congestion and competition for resources at the federal level. The performance of federal, state and local governments shall improve while the people will benefit by having more political democracy and economic development more closely at hand. (See pages 68-69 of APC/Tinubu Renewed Hope Manifesto) 

It should be pointed out that Tinubu and the APC will be able to accomplish this collaboration with the states, because the current NASS which is APC majority has already conducted a lot of constitutional review of the Legislative lists and some of the proposed amendments have been sent to the State Houses of Assembly. While the Tinubu manifesto is pragmatic and focused, Obi is intent of waxing lofty, albeit poorly, and waxing lyrical albeit without rhythm or rhyme. 

There is so much to unpack in Obi/Datti manifesto of cotton wool. He talks about “elite capture” of Nigeria as a bane to our development, but does not remember to define what “elite capture’ means because from where I stand, PO is the personification of elite capture in all ramifications. But I will pause at stage. Next write-up will go deeper into his plans or lack thereof in his manifesto.