CHAPTER
ONE
INTRODUCTION
- BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY:
The
pride of any government is the attainment of higher value level of development
in such a way that its citizens would derive natural attachment to governance.
However, for a nation to be in a phase of development there must be some
pre-requisites, which include socio-political and economic stability. The gap
between the developed and the developing countries is not static or narrow but
is continually widening. A large majority of the world’s population in
developing world lives in a state of poverty. The problem of urban population,
rural stagnation, unemployment and growing inequalities continue to face less
developed countries, which Nigeria belongs. Hope of accelerated developmentsis
difficult to realize. This gloomy situation is of great concern to stake
holders and the concerned citizenry. Nigeria has not been able to engender
meaningful development inspite of her huge resources endowment. This has
greatly affected her quest to improved quality of life of her citizens.
On the main issues in development,debates
are on how to tackle rural poverty. The constraints to developing the rural
area as well as the problems of this critical sector have come to loam very
large for over four decades in Nigeria. All attempts to put the rural areas on
course of development have failed.Conditions have continued to worsen and
poverty has become a major issue in the rural areas especiallyAbohMbaise local
government area in spite of their potentials. Therefore, a major concern to
government’s multilateral institutions and policy makers in different countries
is to identify appropriate strategy for poverty alleviation especially in the
rural areas.
Prior to 1996, about 46.3% of
Nigeria’s population was, according to the data of the Federal Office of Statistics
(FOS), living below the national poverty level (Olatunji, 2006). The poverty
index increased to over 65.6% by 1996 and according to the estimate of UNDP,
over 70% of Nigerians were by 2002 living below the poverty level (UNDP, 2008).
The picture of growing poverty in
Nigeria can easily be demonstrated by reference to the facts. For example,
Nigeria per-capital income was $1151.71 in 1976. It fell to $835.67 in 1994 and
fell below $200 in 1996, the population of absolute poor rose from 35 million
in 1992 to 44 million in 1995, the percentage of people living below poverty
line rose from 34% in 1992 to 82% in 1998 (Abubakar, 1999). By 1995 Nigeria was
placed among the 17 poorest countries in the world (Ashton, 1995), and by 1996
the country was 1472nd on the HDI and 13thpoorest nation
in the world (Ike, 1996). All other indicators of poverty point towards
deterioration of the poverty situation in Nigeria. For example, life expectancy
at birth which was 54 years in 1990, and 52 years in 1992 had became 47.6 years
in 1996, infant mortality which was 85 per 1000 in 1990 researched 195 per 1000
in 1995 (Anikogbo, 1997).
These facts may have led the World
Bank to declare that in “1995 welfare was probably lower and poverty higher than
in the pre-oil boom year of early 1970s”(World Bank, 1997:67), and the growing
inequality which was brought about by the activities mentioned earlier, many
have also led the World Bank to caption its 1996 report on Nigeria as “Nigeria:
poverty in the midst of plenty” (World Bank 1996). One can conveniently describe
Nigeria today as a very rich country of very few extremely rich people and very
many extremely poor people.
These frightening poverty assessment
data which are also practically manifested on the rural area among the vast
majority of the populace must have informed the persistent calls of concerned
opinion leaders and pressure group including business, political, professional,
academic, labour , traditional and religious leaders on the government to eradicate
poverty within the socio-economic system, the weight and frequency as well as
the canvassed justification for these calls notwithstanding, government at
every level appears not to be adequately responsive or out of meaningful ideas
for sustainable developmental strategy.
Based on the above analysis, this
study focuses on the causes of increasing Nigeria’s poverty scourge, paying a
particular attention to the rural communities of AbohMbaise local government
area with a view to possibly proffering effective, realistic and applicable
solution.
1.2.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Any
nation that neglects the development and empowerment of the rural communities
should not expect meaningful development. Alegbeleye and Aina (1985:13) state
that “the third world countries have recently come to realize that unless the
rural areas are well developed, hardly would any meaningful development occur
in these countries”. Okey (2003:1) also says that “Rural development is a basis
for economic development and information is an important ingredient in the
development process”.
In rural areas, where 85 percent of
Nigeria’s poor people reside, the major cause of poverty has been identified as
the use of outmoded and inefficient systems in agriculture and craft. Other
contributory factors to low income in the rural areas of Nigeria, according to
Abubakar (1975), include inadequate infrastructure, lack of credit and
marketing facilities, unfavourable rural institutions especially in respect of land tenure’ ignorance, culture and
institutional rigidities. Williams (1984), has also identified lack of viable
nonfarm employment opportunities in the rural sector as a major source of rural
poverty, he argues that such situation leads to over-crowding on the land and
under employment of labour. It should also be added that even though
alternative occupations, like traditional craft and petty trading to exist in
most villages, yet investigations have shown that incomes realized from these
occupations are as low as those realized from subsistent farming (Williams
1984).
Burkey
(1993), has listed quite impressive number of factors that positively correlate
with poverty, they include; lack of modernization tendencies, physical
limitations, laziness, illiteracy, bureaucratic stiffing, dependency of third
world countries and exploitation by the local elites. A close examination of
the factors reveals that some are exogenously caused while others like
illiteracy and laziness are endogenously caused. One factor that has speedily
fueled poverty is the distribution of income. The distortional distribution of
income is not only a problem among the rural people, but among the population
of the whole nation (Buton, 1987). Distribution of income could be viewed from
two perspectives, the fiscal distribution of income and provision of both
social and economic infrastructure (Adawo, 2010). In Nigeria, the practice of
relative wage income hypothesis , where jobs are evaluated on the basis of job
content and wages are paid accordingly is not applicable, rather government
income at all levels are shared among politicians, political cohorts and
dubious contractors (Abubakar, 1999), the fact that socio-economic
infrastructures are not provided endemically spread poverty in Nigeria.
Conventional explanation of the causes
of poverty in Nigeria in the existing literature ranged from lack of capital,
low-level technology, illiteracy, population to economic mismanagement. All
these causative factors are applicable to all third world countries (Robertson
1980).
However, the above analysis merely
focus on the general causes of poverty in rural areas, hence did not provide a
satisfactory bases for the generalization of the causes of poverty in Local
government which is our focus here, again they made no mention of the effect of
unavailability of good health care services and lack of family planning by the
rural dwellers. Therefore, it is this noticeable gap in the literature that
this study seeks to fill using the following research questions as a guide.
- Does
lack of family planning by rural dwellers has any relationship with the
increasing poverty problem in AbohMbaise?
- Does
Inaccessibility of good health care services in the rural areas have a noticeable relationship with the prevailing
scourge in AbohMbaise?
- Does
deprivation of local government autonomy lead to rural poverty in AbohMbaise?
1.3
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
Following
the traditional way of explaining poverty, Nigerian scholars have come out with
different explanations. For example, Agbu(1997), attributes poverty in Nigeria
to poor technology and argued forcefully that until technology is properly
addressed through well coordinated strategies, any effort at poverty to harsh
natural environment, an illiterate population growth, and bad government, evil
of colonialism and greed of the elites, will continue to be an illusion. Okojie
(1997) blames the poor education for the poor and their children as the cause
of poverty in Nigeria and argues that, unless education
is given top priority, poverty will remain.
Therefore, the broad objective of this
study is to examine the root causes of rural poverty in Nigeria, while the
specific objectives are:
RURAL POVERTY AND THE CHALLENGES OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA A STUDY OF ABOH MBAISE LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF IMO STATE
