RURAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES AND UNEMPLOYMENT IN NIGERIA

RURAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES AND UNEMPLOYMENT IN NIGERIA (A CASE STUDY OF ABAK LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA)

CHAPTER ONE

• Introduction/Background Of The Study

So far, rural areas in Nigeria have remained the most backward enclaves of economic space. This point must therefore be stressed that, by and large, the place of domicile of more than eighty percent of the nation’s population constitutes an indispensable factor in the overall development of the country.

Rural development strategies should therefore be interpreted as deliberated measures set out to improve not only the rural people but also the rural space. This is an obvious means of achieving a balanced national development. Therefore, rural development should aim not only at providing jobs and increased income but also at making available a high quality of rural living through improved community services. It was on this reason that it became paramount for the federal government to establish another unit of government which would be used as an agency in achieving this goal. The local government therefore becomes an inevitable for sociao-economic and political mobilization in rural Nigeria. This in Nigeria since 1976, the local government have been called upon to give the rural sector (local) a strong economic foundation, a situation where the people of the rural community would become self reliance, having a sense of belonging in the nation’s economy. It is therefore on this note that one could say that the functions of the local government is enormous having accommodated the highest population of people, who are mostly literate with little or no means of improving oneself.

The local government on this note is considered in the Nigeria context as the natural base of rural development and from this perspective, they should be rooted in the national struggle to realize, economic growth and the total transformation and development of our rural areas. That is for the fact that the local government through the edits which establishes it, was made to prominently cater for the needs of the rural people, should constitute machineries which can properly effect positive changes in the rural areas.

Going by the rural – urban contributions to the nations building, it is pertinent to state that resources for the substance of the nations existence is mostly derived from the rural society as compared to what is contributed by the urban societies. The matrix of reciprocity to this contribution is rather negative. The rural people thus are been isolated from the social benefits of the resources, which it has reproduced. Therefore the need to appraise or evaluate the extent to which our local government has implemented rural development polices becomes paramount. From the above, therefore, it is not a myth to assert that in effective utilization of research derived from the rural areas has shelved the rural dwellers into political, social and economic deprivation. It is no these  indices that the federal government set up machineries of minimizing the deteriorating conditions of the rural people for these reasons therefore, policies on rural development were introduced to curb the in adequacies. Some of these policies include such policies like operation feed the nation, green revolution, Structural Adjustment Programmed (SAP), Mass Mobilization Social Justice and Economic Recovery (MAMSER). Better life for Rural Women and DEFFRI. The issue is whether or not this campaign and attention grabbing strategies towards rural development have actually resulted in the needed change, which is really the intention of these activities, and equally important is whether the majority of Nigerians, especially the rural dwellers who are even being  planned for are not left at the mercy of nature thus the campaign towards their alteration becoming the source of their exploitation.

Importantly, a proper diagnosis, analysis, evaluation and the implementation of these policies requires a diligent leader who is not only rich in the knowledge of the rural people and policy implementation, but is also committed and rest in skill of transformation of the rural community. In justifying these objective, Cuboyenga (1987) comments that the main reasons for the national local government reforms of 1976 include a research on how to restructure the local system of government, social and economic emancipation of the local people as well as even development and institutional safe guarding against truancy.

This study which