ABSTRACT
For
the purpose of clarity and operational reasons, this study was undertaken to
investigate good governance and poverty alleviation programme in Benue State
with a focus to six selected local government. Three specific objectives were
formulated and three research questions were set to guide the study. The major
limitation of the study was that the research was formally intended to study the
whole local governments in Benue State because of the cost of covering the
whole local governments alone six local governments were selected for the
study. The study reviewed its literature in a thematic format covering the
basic concept of the study and the entire variable that relates to the study
objective. The study adopted structural functionalism as a theoretical
framework and survey design as it research methodology. The population of the
study was ……… and the sample size is approximately 400. The used questionnaire
as a method of data collections and simple percentage and tables as a method of
data analysis, after the investigation the study found out that, Benue state is
endowed with immense agricultural potential with comparatively weak infrastructural
base and near assent private sector and incompetence, inefficiency,
professional misconduct, indolence, negligence, mismanagement, misappropriation
of funds, embezzlement of funds, fraud, favoritism, abuse of office for
personal gains, nepotism, corruption and general indiscipline have crippled any
economic development and poverty alleviation programme in Benue State. The
study further recommends prudent political leadership to galvanize the poverty
alleviation programme in other to achieve the set objective of the programme in
Benue State.
Keywords: Good Governance,
Agriculture and poverty Alleviation Programme, Fulani Herdsmen
TABLE OF CONTENT
Title page – – – – – – – – – – i
Approval page – – – – – – – – – ii
Dedication – – – – – – – – – – iii
Acknowledgement – – – – – – – – – iv
Abstract – – – – – – – – – – v
Table of content – – – – – – – – – vi
CHAPTER
ONE: INTRODUCTION
- Background
of study – – – – – – – – 1
- Statement
of the problem – – – – – – – – 3
- Research
questions – – – – – – – – 6
- Objectives
of study – – – – – – – – 6
- Significance
of the study – – – – – – – 7
- Hypotheses – – – – – – – – – 8
CHAPTER
TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.0 Literature
Review – – – – – – – – 9
2.1 Conceptual
Clarifications – – – – – – – – 9
2.1.1 Good Governance – – – – – – – – 9
2.1.2 Poverty
Alleviation – – – – – – – – 12
2.2 Technological
Improvement, Agricultural Empowerment and
Poverty Alleviation in
Benue State – – – – – – 14
2.3
Prospects of Good Governance,
enabling environment for Foreign
Direct Investment and
Value Chain in Agriculture in Benue State – – 19
2.4 Good
Governance, Leadership and the Challenge of Development and
Poverty Alleviation in
Nigeria – – – – – – 22
2.5 Link
between Poverty and Good Governance – – – – 28
2.6 Good Governance
and Poverty Alleviation in Benue State prior 2015 – 33
2.6.1 Poverty
profile and Poverty Alleviation Programme in Nigeria – – 33
2.6.2 General
Overview of Benue State – – – – – – – 34
2.7 Summary/Gap
in Literature – – – – – – – 35
CHAPTER THREE: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND RESEARCH
METHODOLOGY
3.1 Theoretical
Framework – – – – – – – 37
3.2 Research
Design – – – – – – – – – 38
3.2.1 Population
of the study – – – – – – – 39
3.2.2 Sample
and sampling techniques – – – – – – 39
3.2.3 Instrument
for data collection – – – – – – 41
3.3 Method
of data collection – – – – – – – – 41
3.4 Method
of data analysis – – – – – – – 42
CHAPTER
FOUR: DATA PRESENTATION/HYPOTHESES TESTING
CHAPTER
FIVE: SUMMARY OF FINDINGS, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
5.1 Summary
of findings – – – – – – – – 58
5.2 Conclusion – – – – – – – – – 59
5.3 Recommendation
– – – – – – – – 60
Bibliography – – – – – – – – – – 61
Appendix – – – – – – – – – – 64
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
- Background
to the Study
In recent decades, poverty has evolved as the
single most daunting challenge confronting humanity. In Africa, the scourge of
poverty is not only deeply-rooted and widespread, but somewhat paradoxical.
This is so because, despite the upward trend in the average real growth rate
over the past five years, endemic poverty has persisted. Perhaps, nowhere else
in the African continent is the scourge more prevalent than in Sub-Saharan
Africa (SSA) where about 56.6 percent of its 936.1 million populations live
below the national poverty line (World Bank, 2013). Contemporary trends reveal
that, the depth of poverty – that is, how far incomes fall below the poverty
line – is greater in SSA than anywhere else in the world.
The
issue of poverty has, in the last two decades, become an intractable problem
among the governments of developing nations of Latin America, Asia and Africa
that constitute about two third of world population (World Bank, 2006). The
mass media, both local and international have sensitised the international
community to this plight. It is against this backdrop that the United Nations
in September 2000 constituted a global compact group to address the issue of
biting poverty ravaging the world. The outcome of the committee’s efforts is
the emergence of 15 years Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which is binding
on all the governments of developing nations. Although it appears the whole
continent of Africa is vulnerable but this paper focuses on Nigeria
In
Nigeria, the problems of poverty is multi-faceted, among which are lack of
access to good health facilities, high infant mortality, lack of essential
infrastructure, unemployment and under-employment as well as endemic and
entrenched corruption. Thus, with about 69 percent of the poor living below the
poverty line, that is, about 112 million Nigerians in 2010 (NBS, 2010), it
becomes quite worrisome. More worrisome is the fact that, poverty situation in
the state has shown a rising tendency in the past couple of decades, accounting
for the nation’s low development indicators and its ranking among the poorest
nations in the world (OXFAM, 2003). Majority of Nigeria’s population live in
poverty with insufficient income to cover minimum standard of food, water,
fuel, shelter, medical care and schooling (World Bank, 1996).
Given
the nation’s endowment with natural resources, its poverty profile presents a
sober picture of a nation in decline. On the other hand, contemporary
development thinking since the 1990s has placed a high premium on democratic
governance as a catalyst for poverty reduction and sustainable development. The
World Bank (1992) viewed governance “as the means in which power is exercised
in the management of a state’s economic and social resources for development”.
The World Bank further averred that for development to succeed in any state
there must be sound development management, a well-run market economy, together
with an effective liberal democratic political regime (Cardoso, 2001). Thus,
good governance has come to be associated with liberal democracy as a necessary
element for sustainable development (UNRISD, 2000). Indeed, governance is a
broad concept covering political, economic and social dimensions.
Operating
in three major domains – the state, civil society and private sector,
governance reflects all the ways in which societies distribute power, and
manage public resources and problems (Gettu, 2001). Therefore, good governance
is central to national development (Corkery, Land and Bossuyt, 1995). It is in light of the above that the
present attempts to investigate the impact of good governance and poverty
alleviation in Nigeria with a focus on selected local governments in Benue
state from 2015 to 2016.
- Statement
of the Problem
The
issue of poverty presents a case of paradox in Nigeria. Although the state is
abundantly rich in land, human and natural resources, yet more than 75 percent
of her 160 million people including women, youths and children residing in the
rural communities still live below poverty line (Oshewolo, 2010). Nigeria is
the world’s largest community of black race, the most populous nation in Africa
and the 7th in the world. An oil rich state, with her 2.5million
barrel per day, Nigeria ranks as Africa’s largest oil producing nation and the
6th position in the world.
Apart
from oil, Nigeria also has a large deposit of gas which is adjudged to be
greater than oil. Since her oil discovery in the early 1970s till 2005, Nigeria
has earned over N3.2trillion from oil exploration (World Bank, 2008). This
figure rose between 2009 and 2010 when she realised US$196billion within four
years (National Bureau of Statistics, 2010). Besides oil and gas, Nigeria has
37 other solid mineral deposits (yet to be explored) in commercial quantity
(FOS, 2009). Despite her enormous natural endowment and massive wealth, Nigeria
is still surprisingly, included among the 50 states of the world where poverty
level is still unreasonably high (CBN Brief, 2002).
According
to the statistics released by the World Bank and the IMF, Nigeria ranked 152nd
among states with the lowest Human
Development Index (HDI), 54th among 77 other developing nations where poverty
level remains high and upward swinging (UNDP, 1998, p.26; Sanni, 2003, p.10).
The National Bureau of Statistics (2012) also observes that the number of people
living in poverty in Nigeria has risen from 54.7% in 2004 to 60.9% in 2010
translating to 112 million poverty-infested Nigerians despite the 7.6% growth
claim by the government.
The
Punch newspaper of Wednesday, July16, 2008 reported that over 24 milion
Nigerian youths are jobless while about 1.6 million out of over 16 million
employed youths were under-employed (National Manpower Board, 2008; National
Bureau of Statistics, 2008). Besides, the Economist (2006, p.7) in its survey
also offered a fresh perspective to Nigeria’s poverty profile. It states, “more
than 4 out of 10 Nigerians live on less than N1, 320 per capital per month”.
This is approximately US$8.2 per month or 27cent per day which, according to
UNDP barely provides for a quarter of nutritional requirements of a healthy
living. The report further added that “life expectancy is pegged at 50.1years
while infant mortality rate is 112 per 1000 births; adult literacy 59.5% and
access to clean water is 50%” respectively.
In
Nigeria as in other developing nations, there is a geographic dimension to
poverty issue as can be seen by its level of pervasiveness in the rural
settings than in the urban centres. According to Aigbokhan (2000) and FOS
(2004), about 63.8% of Nigeria’s population translating to about 80million
people including women, youths and children are resident in the villages and
are poor.” Oshewolo (2010) also observed that in 2004, the urban
population with access to water was 67% whereas it was 31% in the rural
communities.
The
development situations in the rural areas are even made worse as basic
infrastructural facilities are non- available or are in state of disrepair.
There are no good roads, no standard school, no adequately equipped hospital; which
depicts absence of government. This situation has induced mass rural-urban
migration which leads to mass un-employment with its attendant social ills such
as armed robbery, hired assassination, drug abuse, raping, prostitution,
teenage abortion, ritual murder; advance-fee-fraud and the most recent
development, kidnapping and terrorism. All these have contributed largely to
making Nigeria unsafe for both the rich and the poor.
Poverty,
like an elephant, is more easily recognised than defined (Aboyade, 1975).
Notwithstanding its multidimensional nature that lent it to various
controversial definitions, poverty has been defined by the World Bank (2004) as that level of income below which a
certain percentage of the population is to live.
The UNDP (2009) provided an all-embracing definition of poverty as “denial of choices and opportunity, a violation of human dignity, lack of basic capacity to participate effectively in the society, not having enough to feed, to cloth a family, not having access to school and health facilities, lack of land to farm or employment to earn a living, not having access to credit facility, insecurity, discrimination and exclusion of individuals, households and communities; susceptibility to violence, living on marginal or fragile environments without access to clean water or good sanitation”.
Previous studies focused on how the various poverty alleviation programmes of government, have impacted on the general populace by looking at poverty alleviation measures put in place by successive governments and h
