The Oxford English dictionary defines social security as “the monetary assistance from the state for people with inadequate or no income or “a federal insurance scheme providing benefits for pensioners, the unemployed and the disabled”. Social security can also be described as “the provision for aged, unemployed, or injured people; paid for by contributions pooled together by the employed and employers as well as by government income” in order to limit adverse risks to the safety of the general public. The Oxford English dictionary also describes ‘imperative’ as a word qualifying a subject as crucial or of very vital importance. Thus, in explaining the title of my writing, I simply state that the provision of support to the unemployed, injured, aged and the underprivileged is of crucial importance for the continued progress of the country beyond the present, and recent events in the country are testament to this statement.
The Oxford English dictionary defines social security as “the monetary assistance from the state for people with inadequate or no income or “a federal insurance scheme providing benefits for pensioners, the unemployed and the disabled”. Social security can also be described as “the provision for aged, unemployed, or injured people; paid for by contributions pooled together by the employed and employers as well as by government income” in order to limit adverse risks to the safety of the general public. The Oxford English dictionary also describes ‘imperative’ as a word qualifying a subject as crucial or of very vital importance. Thus, in explaining the title of my writing, I simply state that the provision of support to the unemployed, injured, aged and the underprivileged is of crucial importance for the continued progress of the country beyond the present, and recent events in the country are testament to this statement.
At the risk of sounding alarmist, recent happenings in present day Nigeria suggest that without an urgent solution to the spate of criminal activities, the current situation would progressively deteriorate beyond a tipping point from which redress may be virtually impossible. A knee-jerk reaction to the above statement would engender questions about the relationship between crime and social security and why a stronger law enforcement policy is not being advocated.
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In ‘a social welfare critique of contemporary crime control’, Rosenfeld and Messner state that criminologists have identified two major reasons for an average good citizen to commit a crime, which are criminal motivation and criminal opportunity. They further state that individuals have increasingly acquired criminal motivation when they have been denied opportunities for basic livelihood, e.g. lack of water, electricity, employment, education, food, clothing, shelter, good roads and lack of good governance and have been found to commit crimes when these motivations meet criminal opportunity (an unlocked car, an open window, lack of surveillance, perhaps even lack of financial oversight for those in the upper class) resulting in crime. These conditions, one will agree, are rife in our dear country, Nigeria.
To buttress my point, one only needs to read the newspapers to hear of doctors becoming militants and pipeline vandals, graduates becoming armed robbers and kidnappers and one time national heroes begging for bread.
Concurrent to all these are stories of uneducated miscreants becoming multimillionaires through the barrels of guns. Aside the fact that we are progressively witnessing the consequences of a warped value system, we may also be witnessing the birth of a situation in which a very learned generation are increasingly turning to crime, the consequences of which are better left to the imagination. In my opinion it seems that the seeds of inequity and corruption are germinating, the birds of injustice are coming home to roost.
I read with sadness some comments of highly placed individuals on the recent spate of kidnappings in the country and I could only think that those that live in glass houses should not throw stones for indeed we have started reaping the whirlwind as there can be no justice without economic justice, indeed there can be no freedom without equity. In order not to be counted as one that only identifies problems without proffering solutions, I have identified social security as a quick redress to our current ill so as to decrease criminal motivation while we battle the greater ills that have beset us for so long.
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For those who may not know this, we already practice some sort of social security in Nigeria though it is not so called. The amnesty payments in their various forms, real and unreal, can be described as back door social security or fire brigade social security (in Nigerian parlance), and are designed to keep the peace, whether they are planned for the creeks or the Sahel savannah. Unfortunately if political powers decide, these payments may be needed for the Guinea savannah or the rain forests in the future, the potential recipients being the army of the criminally motivated who seek opportunity. Pension payments are also social security payments or are meant to be social security payments when they are not being looted, and programs such as the National Youth Service Corp can be described as programs meant to ensure social security and peace. However, there are silent happenings all over, from kidnappings to fraud and everything in between, a constant clash of motivation and opportunity.
It is with this background that there is an urgent need for a well-planned and properly thought out social safety system to address social imbalances engendered by years of economic injustice and degradation whether at the federal or state level in order to foster social confidence and a sense of social relevance and belonging. The funds needed for this programme need not be from government as a robust tax policy would help provide the funds. The Nigerian people in themselves already operate individual quasi-governments or who does not know that every man in Nigeria is a government unto himself, providing his own water supply, electricity and security, thus paying a little into a pool to help the less privileged in order to prevent them from being criminally motivated will be a little price to pay for restful sleep at night.
Commencing a social security programme is not rocket science (no pun intended), as all that is needed is the political will by our leaders whether at federal or state level to provide the lead in pulling the resources required to formulate requisite policies in starting social security administrations that will provide gap payments for those who have recently lost their jobs or are seeking employment, those needing temporary feeding plans, those needing artisanal training to make a living and the aged who may have no one to turn to. These funds are also replenished when benefactors are taxed after they become gainfully engaged.
This requires adequate planning and the need to have good statistical data of those that may currently need social aid and of those who may potentially need social aid as the need for identity cards may arise to forestall system abuse. This is an issue one would think would be in national focus due to the spate of kidnappings across the country but instead it’s political scheming for 2015 until the next high profile kidnapping. Instead of the APC calling on PDP members to join them, one would think a party that boasts the intellectual capacities of some South-Western state governors would be outlining how different APC would be to PDP. I therefore hope that commencing a well-planned social security administration would be a major plank of the opposition political parties going forward as hopefully this would pressure the government at the centre to join the bandwagon. It is of note that a measure of development a country has attained to is how well she is able to provide social services to its citizens and hopefully this will not elude Nigeria for too long. God bless Nigeria.
Oluwasegun Odetola
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of SaharaReporters
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