Poverty Mentality

If you are a Nigerian, you have heard these two words together so many times. Some people just attribute if to poor people, you can't be more wrong.

I do not use these words to insult any class of people in this our great country but to just describe, just let you understand seriously what this really means.

Poverty is the state of being extremely poor (syn: lacking, Insufficient etc). Mentality is a way of thing of something. Poverty Mentality is a way of thinking in a sense of lack or insufficiency or inadequacy.

Now poverty mentality should not be mistaken for prudence or common sense in spending or saving. Frugality is not poverty mentality. I am going to give examples.

You go to a Nigerian wedding your shoes cost more than some peoples' meals in weeks and the asoebi you bought is the entire amount of someone's monthly salary yet  when they are sharing souvenirs in the reception hall you basically go and beat the servers down so that you will collect souvenirs or collect food. My brother/sister relax, is it a tray you don't have in your kitchen, abi its that candle stand you will not use?

why am I writing this post? well a few weeks ago, I was in one of the Internally displaced peoples (IDP) camps  in Abuja we went there for an outreach for ProjectNoshtheNeedy. Now one donor with one of the collaborating charities had been very generous to bring bags of rice and a lot of other food items for the people in that camp and the surrounding settlements. These things were displayed in the square so that they can be shared for the people who lived there. The weather took a turn for the worse you know how this Abuja winds are especially in rainy season, so the people who were from the charities sharing decided it was wise to hand over the sharing to the elders or leaders in the community so everyone would get out before the rains stated. and they left ( we were still there because we were handling clothes and toys for the children and women) . Before you know it, this police truck comes out from some where, these are the police in charge of the camp i think, they start loading their van with bags of rice and other things that are for these people, they finish and drive away.

 Now these police offices earn salaries they have schools that their children can go to but they still think its their right to deprive a group of refugees of food. No matter how much you pay some of these police offices, they will still act like its their right. No matter what they get, they will still stop you on the road and ask you if there is anything for the ''your boy''. Its their mentality; that mentality that doesn't allow you enjoy what you have because you have the feeling that everybody else's situation is better than yours.

I was working with a group of women trying to start petty businesses, I asked one woman what her hold up is, she stated legit problems which I understood, then she lost me when she went on to state that, her step brother, whose mother could afford to send him to school after their father died, has many cars in his house (2), his children (4) are in university  and he is retired but when she asked him for money he said he doesn't have because he is trying to finish his house in the village. Even with his many cars he still told her he didn't have money. She was really angry with her brother for saying no, even when she just gave me reasons why he will probably be strapped for money. You also need to know that this woman has 6 children, the last 2 are babies one is 17months the other one is about 6months (don't ask about the husband), but all she could see was that he said no that one time. I remember asking her if she had asked him for money before and he had given her, she said yes. So you see as far as this woman was concerned it was her right for her brother to burst his chops working and he had to give her money when he asked. This is just the way some people think there is nothing you can do. If you can barely afford rent in Abuja the family in the village will be saying how you are so selfish living in Abuja but you wont bring money for your cousin in the village to marry his second wife. 

When people have these mentality there is no way you can please them because with the poverty mentality comes a strong sense of entitlement that you are owed by everybody else to make your situation better instead of your own hardwork and sensible application of self to find a solution to your problem. You will see a man who earns 15 thousand Naira a month in this country marry a new wife from his village and bring her all the way to what ever city he is in  because he just got a pay rise from 15k to 20k Naira.
There is nothing that can be done, not as a government, organisation or an individual to inform a  person like this that it  is not necessarily a rise in his standard of living, but he views his enjoyment and the help of his employers and the government as a right, putting both wives and all his 8 children at an economic disadvantage just because of his thinking.  

"Poverty mentality and poverty of the mind are bed fellows. While poverty mentality whispers to you that you are poor; poverty of the mind tells you that you cannot do anything about your situation. It is poverty of the mind that prevents a man from finding solutions to his problems. It is poverty of the mind that tells a man that he must depend on someone else for survival. It is poverty of the mind that doesn’t allow a man to think properly and act masterfully."

--Niyi Onifade poverty mentality among Nigerian

While sometimes its easy to spot these signs in a society sometimes its not. like all things, to make a situation better we need to affect the mass mentality on situations. 

xo