Effective Poverty Alleviation Programme as Panacea for Security Challenges in Nigeria: The Ancient Israelite and the Contemporary Church Experience
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Date
2015
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Department of Religious Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria.
Abstract
Poverty and insecurity constitute two major challenges confronting Africa generally and Nigeria in particular. Both -poverty and insecurity are like Siamese twins that cannot be separated. As a matter of fact, higher percentage of the security challenges being witnessed in Nigeria is caused by poverty. Indeed, poverty in Nigeria has become a breeding forum for all social ills being experienced in the country today such as kidnapping, armed-robbery, ritual killing, pipeline vandalisation and the rest. The reason for this is not far-fetched; it is because “an idle hand is the devil’s workshop. “ Consequently, many of the unemployed youths in Nigeria engage in various criminal acts that constitute security threats to Nigeria. Bearing in mind the fact that one possible way of overcoming security
challenges in Nigeria is to put effective and functional poverty alleviation programmes in place and which the Nigerian government has failed to do, this paper, therefore, examines various poverty alleviation mechanisms put in place in the Old Testament to effectively curb poverty and insecurity (food, economic, social and political insecurity) in ancient Israelite society. This is with a view that the contemporary church as collaborator with the government in finding lasting solution to the problem of poverty and insecurity would borrow a leaf from the experience of the ancient Israelite society in its attempt to respond to the cry of the poor and security challenges in Nigeria. The paper recommends that the church should actively be involved in the poverty alleviation struggles of the government (as the government alone could not do it) through effective and functional poverty alleviation programmes as practised in ancient Israelite society.
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Keywords
Security challenges in Nigeria, Poverty alleviation in ancient Israel, Poverty alleviation in Nigeria, Church and poverty alleviation in Nigeria, Care of the poor