By Steve Orji

A naïve and an uncritical observer would sum up poverty in Africa to mean lack of money. Money at all levels, individuals and corporates would not solve problems of Africa, to which poverty is at the top, as these problems were created at both the cognitive and value judgement levels. Poverty at the material level could connote lack of money or material means, but Africa’s problem is in the realm of poor value assessment and cultural misplacement of values.

In societies with distorted social values money becomes an over-compensated commodity. In such places, money tends to replace creative social commonsense, subtly becomes the dominant value agent, creeps up into critical segments like politics, corporate governance, institutions, faith and the cultural foundations.

The person who gives the largest amount of money in the family, in the church or at any other social occasion becomes by social default, the agent-architect of such communal space. Africa is largely a monetised space. Nigeria, Africa’s poster child, is the global centre of mammon.

Money has become the social idol in Nigeria. People who don’t have money in Nigeria are either consigned to the social garbage, or be numbered among the social lepers, in which case such persons are metaphorically ostracised from the ring of valued people. This has unfortunate consequences. People are primed to look for any means possible so they can be named amongst the titans of society or in their own closet community be recognised as valued individuals, and this cult of money worship is the active trigger to Nigeria’ social distortion.

People’s social persona changes almost in a revolutionary way when money is involved, as money in Africa is the strongest branding parameter, decideswho is accorded what, who gets what honour, and whose views and opinions must be respected.

In monetised societies, justice is sold and bought on the premise of money-power, national institutions and instruments of state are no less fealties in the hands of the nouveau-riche. This is the social ascendency order that tend to sublimate rogue elements and people with criminal backgrounds to become political leaders through the back channel of dirty money.

Contesting for any elective position in Nigeria could cost from N1billion up to 100 billion Naira and this may be in addition to untracked spendings that culminate to wholesale compromise of an entire electioneering infrastructure ranging from the human and technology resources involved. It is this disinclination for Africa and its people to look at money for what it is, than what it has been taken for, that accounts for its acquired predatory prowess, damaging on its path societies’ intrinsic value judgments, compromise state institutions, rip up cultural foundations and create cult of social narcissism and thus have imposed the rich and wealthy on society as sole arbiters of the social and culture ecosystem.

To think that money is everything is a mental and psychological disposition towards poverty and this is the kind of poverty that have struck Africa at the time the white man was handing over the reins of governance to indigenous black Africans. African politicians seized such opportunity as once-in -a lifetime chance to amass money and other things that privilege of office can bring along.

Todays’ politicians can conveniently rent crowds to join their bandwagon during campaigns or state visits just so they can be ticked off as being popular with the people, not minding that these illusionary, make-belief electoral triumphalism has only deepened the social and cultural deprivations of the people and have placed them at the bottom of critical and objective judgement calls.

What would a typical African do when he is handed large sums of money? I can bet you if he is Igbo as me, would run to his village to erect a monument of a house and make sure it is bigger and more colourful than his neighbour’s and will hire a brass band to play at the dedication of the mansion and on that day food and drink will be in lavish supply and in a few weeks’ time, the house will be virtually empty until the next time he returns to the village. He has simply announced his arrival at the waiting lounge of very important people. In the southwest of Nigeria, the man may decide to marry more wives and give birth to more children, albeit children who grow up socially and psychologically displaced within their own natural space. Or the natural wildcard, throw parties for the rest of the year and the rest is history.

Africa’s social empire is governed by a choreographed ritual of vicarious satisfaction. Citizens look at politicians who live off lavishly on stolen monies and adjudge them to be successful and this triggers the quest and uncurbed obsession to be like them.

What sort of satisfaction would someone derive from a wealth he or she didn’t earn or worked for, honours and privileges that were possibly contrived?

We seem not to know that poverty of the soul and mind is a damning retribution to society worse than poverty due to lack of money.

Africa’ colonisation experience and the slave trade left negative social and psychological residues in the social DNA of Africans, resulting to loss of self-worth, poor self-image which unwittingly Africans tries to step away from by applying superficial social therapies of loud and bullish showiness that only spotlights even deeper the shallowness of their inner consciousness.

Tyrants who pass for political leaders are people still fighting deep -seated psychological scars of self-dispossession within their own consciousness, thinking that power, totalitarian power could forge the alchemy to reinvent the sense of the self, damaged by poverty of self-worth.

On top of the monstrous power thirst, African leaders court the arbitrary logic that more money predicates more development. For instance, the economy post reported this: “President Tinubu had borrowed N96 trillion in his 2 years in office, as reported by Economy Post, but is now requesting fresh $1.75 billion from the World Bank, which is equivalent to N2.65 trillion. If the World Bank grants the loan to Nigeria, President Tinubu’s loan in 28 months of his administration will rise to N93.5 trillion”.

Nigeria today, ranks among the poorest in the world.

Money will never provide curative remedies to internal value distortions.

And how is it possible that a people not given to self-reflection and objective questioning can rise above the primitive obsession with greed, kleptomania and lust for money, to launch a social order and national culture in which money is not the piece of idol? Let’s look at China for instance. Resentment for China will not rob it of its global essence and imperial destiny. China is destined to be a ruling world power because it worked for it. It has through the years distilled its social and cultural thinking to forge a pan-Asian civilisation that stands to challenge the hegemony of the west.

China has never really wanted to be like any other people. They speak Mandarin with imperial pride and enthusiastically export their chop stick culture to anywhere in the world. Its people don’t seem to be intimidated by the cultural encumbrances of colonial domination. The tempo of their development dovetails seamlessly with their social and cultural models. They may have taken some cues from the west, but they adapt these imports to become national assets.

Aside its assertive political and cultural success, China is now a global technology behemoth, in IT, construction, automotive engineering, Ai, name it.

Africa has neither cultural nor economic presence anywhere in the world. Yet Africa wants to imitate everyone.

Most city centres in developing countries of Africa reeks of lavish city infrastructure, an almost hurried, ambitious, sometimes overdone and misguided attempt at sophistication.

So much money is voted in to replicate city infrastructure as seen in the developed world. That at first looks like a good development gesture, what about the matching behavioural and social culture that should flow into the cosmopolitan ambience of the city architecture?

VIPS’ and police convoys conveying important political office holders roil the peace and order of the entire metropolis and you often wonder if that also was a copied act from abroad.

The contrasting features between the model of Africa’ development it is striving to accomplish and the ones in the developed world, its copying from, is the total lack of indigenous culture and character which must underpin the process of its evolution.

It is the mental and value forte’ of a people that is needed to build lasting and enduring civilisations for their own race. The impulsive and often chaotic patterns of social and political articulations that goes into policy formulations, including design of economic models in Africa which are often, always mere knee-jerk attempts to pretend to look like the rest of the world, in which case these formulations often don’t latch into the organic foundations of society.

Th artificial class structure created by Africa’s money syndrome has polarised society into the omni rich and the filthy poor. It is only poverty of conscience and hard-nosed obsession with power that can drive a sitting president to gleefully call for re-election, overseeing millions of hassled, de-humanised citizens barely able to feed themselves.

This is not just the case with Nigeria, relatively across the entire African clime. Africa’s development aspiration is diminished by its lack of social conscience and poverty of cultural character, elements which must be present to guide the trajectory of its social, economic and political growth.

It is soft-headed assumption to think that money, more money can solve development problems of Africa.

Money is no cure to social and cultural poverty. Imaginative leadership and positive political craftsmanship can set Africa on the right value chart.

Theres a throttling possibility that we have been misinformed by the multilateral agencies like IMF and world bank that adopting the Keynesian model of public spending could change the course of African economies.

The question is who is doing the spending? An ideologically pragmatic leader or a roque-minded tyrant who cannot be held to account?

“As of 2024, the world’s major donors contributed $212.1 billion in Official Development Assistance (ODA)which includes aid to Africa. The U.S. is the largest donor, contributing $63.3 billion, which is a significant portion of the total aid provided to Africa”.

Africa is not poor in the technical sense of lack of money; indeed, it is the case of poverty of mind in managing so much money available to it. There must be a nexus where money and good judgement meet, and this is the point Africa lost the plot.

• Orji is a public opinion analyst and a doctoral student at Portsmouth University, United Kingdom.