Benue and the ‘Paradox of Plenty’
For precision, paradox of plenty refers to the contradiction that countries with abundance of natural resources (such as fossil fuels and certain minerals), tend to have less economic growth, less democracy, and worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources.
The phrase “paradox of plenty” otherwise known as “resource curse”, was first used by Richard Auty, a Professor of Economic Geography in his book “Sustaining Development in Mineral Economies the Resource Curse Thesis”. He used the term in describing the fact that countries that are wealthy in resources were not able to develop their own economy, and finally, after exporting a lot of their resources, they scored a weaker economic growth than those countries to which they sent their resources.
Extant literature establishes that African development is plagued and defined by the ‘paradox of plenty’ given that it is a very resource-rich continent, but economically poor. The Nigerian situation finds expression in this regard as a resource curse country too.
As a microcosm federating unit of the country therefore, the Benue State case scenario under review, is as grossly uninspiring and appalling beyond mere expression. This is because despite the superabundance of natural and human resources in Benue State, its development upshot remains a deplorable situation of begging with a golden bowl, as if Benue was in mind when the idea of ‘resource curse’ was conceptualized.
Benue is indeed a resource-rich State. However, harnessing this resources-richness to our comparative advantage has remained a mirage. Otherwise one really wonders why Benue is endowed agriculturally, but has not taken-up a national and even international place of pride in agricultural driven industrialization in this country. Our yams, oranges, tomatoes for instance, have no one single processing factory in the State. The State Government cannot simply boast of one single “model farm” in its name. The money spinning potentials of agriculture could be effectively utilized by State to check sole dependence on monthly allocation accruing from the federation account.
Our large river-Benue has not placed us in vantage position for irrigation farming. Perhaps, the only visible economic importance of the river-Benue to us is its overflow into our houses as flood almost on yearly basis. With a large river, crisscrossing Makurdi the State capital, we still buy “mai ruwa” every dry season. In Makurdi for instance, the scorching sun burns us during the day and we stay in darkness under heat during the night, despite all the prospects of harnessing the blazing sun into solar power for usage, supposing the political leadership existed.
How and why have we become so wretched in the midst of plenty? Benue’s socio-economic dynamics and growth trajectories are marked by neglect of the people who constitute the bastion of democratic governance and are at the core of receiving development outcomes. Large scale inequality is been reinforced due to lack of social protection programmes for human development. Unless these issues are addressed as an integral part of developmental strategies and growth models, the crises will accelerate and lead to huge costs in later years.
Unambiguously, Benue State is a paradox in development; a State with much human and natural God-given wealth that does not know how to judiciously use it to foster its socio-economic progress among federating units in the country. It is really desponding that despite the rapid transformation some states are experiencing in this 21st century, Benue seem to have remained a “third world state” in a third world Nation-State, 45 years after its creation in 1976.
Curiously, the noble and altruistic leadership models of Benue’s founding fathers which we have continuously referenced, as been effective and purposeful in laying a rock-solid foundation for the State, have been utterly jettisoned by the contemporary crop of leaders whose leadership values are incongruent to our desire to experience people-centred development. One really wonders why the leadership ideals of our modern leaders are only skewed to growing their private empires using Benue’s commonwealth, while the Benue citizens continue to wallow in abject penury.
Clearly, Benue’s socio-economic structures and systems have not experienced corresponding progress in the midst of ample natural and human resources. The stark reality has been that dispensation upon dispensation, year-on-year, Benue citizens have had to adopt survivalist strategies in coping with the colossal damage already done to the soul of the State.
Benue is terribly infested and plagued by a litany of quandaries including but not limited to social inequality, poverty, disease, unemployment, dearth of infrastructure, environmental degradation, and above all a rising wave of insecurity which has in recent years, thrown up severe humanitarian crises in the State with no glimmer of hope in sight just yet.
To simply restate the obvious; Benue has been a disastrous development experience. On just about every conceivable socio-economic metric, Benue’s performance since creation 45 years ago has been dismal, except for the impressive and laudable pioneering efforts of its founding fathers, one really wonders where we would have been by now and what fate would befallen us as a people. Practically, our leaders seem to have sentenced Benue citizens to “political Golgotha” as our hope of getting out of this doldrums now rest only with the divine.
Evidently, the models adopted by our contemporary leaders have not provided the desired development. Therefore, pertinent to emphasise that unlocking Benue’s potentials toward socio-economic development is squarely up to Benue. What has been lacking over the years is the political leadership will to foster and bolster the development outcomes, which of course, must be people-centred, given that reasonable governance ought to be about the common good of the citizens.
I contend that the power to break the cycle of poverty and inequality and to give poverty-stricken Benue people power over their own destinies a radical redistribution of power, opportunities, and assets is required. The two driving forces behind such a transformation are active citizens and effective State policies.
Why active citizenship? Because people living in poverty must have a voice in deciding their own destiny, fighting for rights and justice in their own society, and holding the State government to account.
Why effective state policies? Because history shows that no State has prospered without an effective policy structure that can actively manage the development process. There is now an added urgency beyond the moral case for tackling poverty and inequality. Benue needs to be built into a secure, fair, and sustainable entity. There is still time, provided our leaders and even citizens act to change our resource curse status.
Benue must stop progressing in error!
