The Terms and Conditions of Poverty

[when being broke feels like signing a contract you never read..]

By Jesse Jackson 

Poverty isn’t really about lacking money anymore,  it’s a legal and financial ecosystem with its own terms, clauses, and conditions. Somewhere between bank policies, loan app disclaimers, and government relief programs, the poor have become unwilling signatories to a contract they never agreed to.

Clause 1: “Access” is a luxury product!

In the financial world, the word access is treated like charity; as if inclusion itself were a favour. You want a small loan? There’s an app for that, with 30% interest and a legion of customer service reps ready to harass you if you default. You want to save money? There’s a fintech wallet that will freeze your funds faster than it credits them.

It’s ironic: the richer you are, the more financial systems trust you. The poorer you are, the more proof they demand: utility bills, collateral, references, guarantors, BVNs, next of kin, and maybe a blood sample if possible. Poverty has fine print, and “access” sits on the first line.

Clause 2: The law protects capital, not people!

There’s a reason financial institutions can write off billion-naira bad loans from politically connected clients while hounding a petty trader for ₦15,000. The legal architecture of most developing economies, including Nigeria, was built around protecting money, not humans.

You see it when banks restructure debts for corporations but blacklist individuals for missing one repayment. You see it in how microfinance banks enforce recovery with legal backing, but the same legal system stays silent when lenders violate data privacy or use intimidation tactics.

In other words, the law isn’t blind. It just wears designer shades.

Clause 3: The poorer you are, the bigger you pay!

No, not in literal percentage terms but in reality. The poor pay VAT on everything they consume, from bread to data bundles. The rich pay accountants to avoid it. The poor pay cash — the most expensive way to transact. The rich pay in assets — the most tax-efficient.

It’s like a rigged subscription model: you pay the most when you can afford the least. The legal system calls it “equity”; the poor call it sapa.

Clause 4: The algorithm has no conscience!

Fintech was supposed to democratize finance. Instead, it digitized inequality.

Algorithms now determine creditworthiness based on spending patterns, device type, and even location. The system doesn’t care about your hustle, only your metadata.

If you live in a low-income area, your risk score automatically dips. If your income isn’t steady, your “trust rating” vanishes. It’s financial profiling, just coded into software. The new middlemen aren’t bankers, they're coders who bake bias into code and call it innovation.

Clause 5: Hope is a political subscription!

Every election, hope gets renewed,  just like Netflix. Only difference is, this one no dey entertain.

Governments love to talk about “empowerment schemes”: ₦50,000 grants, youth loans, start-up funds, and palliatives that disappear faster than a Binance withdrawal in 2021.. Each one is marketed like a bailout; in truth, it’s a subscription to dependency.

Every election cycle, poverty becomes a campaign platform. Politicians quote figures from the World Bank like it’s a sermon, then proceed to inflate the cost of living with policies drafted by consultants who’ve never lived on ₦50,000 a month.

The system gives the poor just enough to survive, never enough to leave. It's footprints:

* The invisible signature

Every time someone accepts exploitative credit, or agrees to a loan without reading the 67-page terms, or submits a BVN to an app that leaks data for fun, that’s the invisible signature. Poverty isn’t voluntary, but its paperwork is everywhere.

And like every contract, it benefits the drafter not the signatory.

* The fine print nobody reads

In the end, poverty isn’t just an economic condition; it’s a carefully administered policy designed by law, packaged by finance, and normalized by society. It’s a lifetime subscription that renews automatically unless disrupted by education, opportunity, or sheer luck.

If you read between the lines, you’ll realize something:

The only thing more expensive than being rich is being poor. Because even survival here get charges.

Stay SAFU, my people🫶