Anthropological Definition of Child Poverty In Nigeria

ANTHROPOLOGICAL EXAMINATIONS OF CONCEPTSThe breath-taking richness of cultural diversity in Nigeria, will make the seeming generalized cultural concepts of child and poverty, quite evasive but never impossible to define. In the history of Nigeria there as always being some unequal distribution of wealth and resources amidst nationalities, clans, and persons. In fact the inequality of man is a widely accepted concept by the human mind. In ancient Nigeria, using Old Bini as an example, we have the Oba and the royal family, the palace workers and administrators, the priests, the warriors, the artisans, the farmers. This social stratification is duplicated in the other ancient Kingdoms. We must be reminded that each and every occupants of the varied social strata has children, which are condemned to exist in the realm and place of the parents for as long as they remained dependent.In Colonial Nigeria(1900-1960), we again experience this economic unfairness the more, the primitive style of subsistence existence, in and between communities, got swept off by the modern concepts of commercialisation, thus opening up rooms for re-enforced social divisions amongst people. The urban cities grew to economic super-structures in the country, thereby creating rapid urban migration. This gross urban migrations had its toll on the economic and created a situation of over-utilisation and underutilisations of the national natural and human resources simultaneously. The Nigerian child also happens to be in the midst of this.In the midst of these, the country entered an era of post-colonialism. The interplay of corruption, mismanagement, greed and indiscipline in the high places, pushed Nigeria to an economic mess. Clearing the rubbles of the National financial factor has being the major tasks of recent administrations.On this premise, we can purify an anthropological definition terminology for child and poverty in Nigerian. This we must do by keeping in mind the historical evolutions of Nigeria from the ancient times to the present, and the multiplicity of nationalities and cultures within it, asking ourselves the question of centrality. What really cut across these differences in time and culture? This is the sole way we can get definitions that are anthropologically clear, precise and perennial.Poverty is always a lack. A need that cannot be immediately filled up. A yearning that we are powerless against. It comes upon our weakness like thief in the night and ties us up in cancerous dissatisfaction. In poverty, the dominion of man is questioned and rendered impotent. This is poverty at its physical worst, caused by real needs.There is the sense of poverty that comes also with comparison. Every child is born so rich, that it has no internal conception of poverty. A Nigerian adage puts it this way, “a child thinks his father’s farmyard the largest, until he visits the neighbours’ farmyards. ” When a child is expose to the outside world, either by contact or media, he then feels a sense of insufficiency. So poverty can be defined as an actual or presumed lack, of a person, incapable of filling the lack.In Nigeria, like most African countries, the concept of ‘my child’ is never in vogue. It is always ‘our child’. Since, ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. So the child, is always a precious gift from God that should be welcomed and nurtured by the entire community. The more the children, the more numerical powerful is the family, and in extension, the community is strengthened. The child ‘is dependent, looks up to another, waiting to receive love from another. They cannot amend their ways; they are ordered by others.’5The child born into society, is born to {the society’s} good and ill. From this dance of the society and the child, there is no escape. So, how interesting really is the dance of the Nigerian child with the poverty of Nigerian? What happens in this dance? Are the results positive or negative? Should we allow this dance to continue?