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POLICY IMPLEMENTATION IN POVERTY ALLEVIATION IN NIGERIA (A STUDY OF NKWERE LOCAL GOVERNMENT).

1.1.      BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

Poverty is an enemy of man; it humiliates and dehumanizes its victim. The paper examines poverty alleviation policies and programmes of government and came to the conclusion that these policies failed in the country. The reasons for these include corruption in government and neglect of the target group – the poor, who were never considered during the formulation of these policies. The paper suggests that government should intensify the war against corruption and carry along the target group – the poor, in formulation of it’s programmes by making “pro-poor” policies it’s focus as a basis for poverty alleviation. Poverty has been a serious challenge to government in Nigeria. It’s effect, which include lack of deprivation in the basic necessities of life, is worrisome. Poverty humiliates and dehumiliates it’s victim. As Ukpong (1996) wrote, poverty has earned recognition in the extent of it’s ravaging society and the affairs of humanity at the international, national and local levels. The need exists nor for urgent actions towards it’s eradication and control indeed, poverty is a spare. It is dehumanizing, it must be eradicated (cited in Obadan (1996).

In a bid to overcome poverty, governments initiated different policies and programmes between 1986 and 2004 to alleviate it. These programmes include; Directorate of food, road and rural infrastructure (DFFRI), better life programme (BLP) Directorate of employment (NDE) people bank of Nigeria (PBN) community Bank (CB); family support programmes (FSP); family economic ancement programme (FEAP); poverty eradication programme (PEP); National poverty eradication programme (NAPEP) and National Economic Empowerment Development  strategy (NEEDS) whose aim were to ameliorate the suffering of the people by providing them employment opportunities and access to credit facilities opportunities.

1.2       STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The incidence of poverty remains very high, the existence of various programmes have been posed with a lot of challenges that renders all the effort meaningless.

• Has the poverty alleviation policies and programmes helped in alleviating poverty in Nkwere local government.
• What strategies can the government adopt in order to associate poverty in Nkwere local government.
• In which sectors (Agricultural, education industry) do you think that government should assist in order to reduce poverty.

OTHER PROBLEMS ARE;

• Lack of accountability and transparency among the people executing this programme as most of them seen it as sharing of the national cake.
• Inadequate funding, excessive political interference and political programme as most of them seem to it as sharing national cake these have remained a serious problem confronting public policies in Nigeria. This problem has made it difficult for several programmes to be adequately completed and also shortage of skilled manpower otherwise known as illiteracy, it has been a bame to alleviate poverty especially in such a rural place like Nkwere local Government where also almost 60% of the citizen are subsistence farmers.

Finally, other factors such as inadequate infrastructure, lack of involvement of beneficiaries in project design, implementation, monitoring and evacuation, corruption and mismanagement and absence of a serious problem to alleviate poverty in Nkwere local Government.

1.3       RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1)         To what extent does the poverty exist in Nkwere local government?

2)         What are the impact of poverty reduction policies and programmes on rural communities in Nkwere local government?

3)         To what extent has solution are been offered on how to alleviate poverty in the area and pave way for economic development in Nigeria?

1.4       PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

To examine the causes of poverty in Nigeria using Nkwere Local Government as a case study and to know effort to be made towards showing the economic problem of those living in the rural areas.

1. To x-ray if the poverty is actually existing in Nkwere local government
2. To identify the impact of poverty reduction policies and programmes on rural communities in Nkwere local government.
3. To make sure that solution are been offered on how to alleviate poverty in the area and pave way for economic development in Nigeria.

1.5       SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

This research work is vital because of it’s practical solution to inequality and disparity in the society. The study is based on the fact that poverty is a disease and a big problem that attributed to poverty and know how to alleviate them in order to improve the economy. It was also serve as a data bank where government and individuals will gather information for effective poverty alleviation.

It will serve as a guide to students of institutions of higher learning who are into research studies, measuring that it will serve as a proper consultative text to students and non-students  who will like to widen their knowledge on what poverty is all about, the courses problems and solutions.

1.6       SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The scope of this project encompasses Nkwere local government in poverty alleviation and economic development in Nigeria.

This research work was to tackle those factors that militates against poverty alleviation and to proffer/offer solution to it. It was further limited due to other factors like time constraints, shortage of finance and information and the period were used for lectures and examination.

1.7       LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

A work of this nature is not easy to consummate or accomplish and as a result, there were certain barriers which prevented the research from extending her work as wished.

1)         Time constraints

2)         Financial constraints

3)         Inadequate material

1.8       DEFINITION OF TERMS

POVERTY: Obadan (Cited in Eminue, 2005:5050) defined poverty as referring to lack of physical necessities assets and income, a condition which results in deprivation, social inferiority, isolation, physical wilderness (disillusionment) vulnerability, seasonality, powerlessness, and humiliation.

POVERTY ALLEVIATION: According to Umeabali (2004) poverty alleviation is a means to reduce or alleviate if possible eradicate poverty in the society.

Poverty alleviation is a process of erasing hopelessness, financially poor, situation of distress, meaningless of life, absence of basic life needs inefficiency unavailability of resources inputs, low return of investment, low level quality of labour force, low education level, low level of development, low level of unemployment and political instability etc.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: Economic development has to do with the establishment and promotion of an economic system and promotion of an economic system capable of itself to raise and maintain production and the income levels of all group in the society.

Economic development is defined as quality improvement in all over all standard of living of the people, as well as desired structural transformation in the distributive input and output system of the economy. This means that economic development is all above improvement generally in the standard of living of the people of a particular society Agoha (2004) Economic development is defined as the process whereby the real per capital income of a country increases over a period of time (Meier 1975)

1.9       Organization of the Study

The study will be contained in five (5) chapters. Chapter one will be the introduction part of the work which will also contain statement of the research problem, research question and purpose, the study scope the limitation encountered in the course of the work. Chapter two (2) will review related literatures in the study context, this will enable the researcher to know what that has been done by other writers as regards to the study. This same chapter will also present the theoretical framework and historical background of the case study. Chapter three (3) will contain the methodology for the work; survey design will be adopted so as to enable the researcher to generalize the result of the finding. Taro yamane sampling techniques will be adopted for selecting the sample size from the population while structured questionnaires will be used as instrument for data collection. Chapter four (4) will contain the presentation and analysis of the data collected with the questionnaires and finally, chapter five (5) will contain the conclusion, summary and some pragmatic recommendations made by the researcher.