Nigeria's Raising Poverty Profile Amidst Poverty Alleviation Programmes: Interrogating The Paradox (original) (raw)

The rising profile of poverty in Nigeria is assuming an alarming and worrisome dimension. Nigeria, a Sub-Saharan African country has at least half of its population in abject poverty. It is incontrovertible fact that poverty has been massive, pervasive and engulfs large proportion of the Nigeria society which results in hunger, ignorance, malnutrition, disease, unemployment, poor access to credit facilities and low life expectancy as well as a general level of human hopelessness. Nigeria presents a paradox because the country is rich but the people are poor. Thus, the daunting challenges over the years of nationhood is that of tacking poverty in the mist of abundance of resources that nature and divinity has endowed the country with; hence the proliferation of plethora of programmes to alleviate nay eradicate this hydra-headed monster without any significant evidence. The paper posits that; the poverty alleviation programmes in the country over the years have not impacted the target-beneficiaries-the poor hence NAPEP and so many other poverty alleviation/ reduction programmes mounted by successive government has not realised their objectives in our nation over the years. It is the recommendation of the paper among others; the need for a concerted effort to identify, articulate and highlight the existence, the causes and effects of poverty in Nigeria and pragmatically addressing them. Introduction Over the years, discourse on poverty has continued to engage the attention of scholars, development practitioners, politicians and international development agencies. The consensus however is that poverty is seen as a universal phenomenon that affects the socioeconomic and political well being of its victims whether in a developed or underdeveloped countries. Nigeria a country once regarded as a model for African development and ‗‗Giant in the Sun'' but is today a poor country in the midst of abundant resources. Among other things, the country is enormously endowed with human resources, good whether condition for agriculture, petroleum, gas, and large untapped mineral resources. But rather than recording remarkable progress in the national socioeconomic development, Nigeria retrogressed to become one of the poorest countries fifty years after independence, whereas she was among the richest 50 in the early 1970's (Obadan, 2001:1). Generally, a number of socioeconomic indicators are used to measure the standard of living or the general wellbeing of the people. These socioeconomic indicators include food, heath care, education, employment opportunities, and access to basic infrastructures among others. Poverty is