1.0 INTRODUCTION
Formal education in Nigeria has been as old as the coming of the colonial masters. Its existence is not mysterious. They came in which the intention of extending their support administration, religion and culture to west African countries and also with the pretext for engaging in commercial activities with the inhabitants of those countries.
When they came to the shores of those countries e.g Nigeria, they were unfortunately unable to communicate with the people in their language. They decide to teach the people the way of their life, their language. So some agreed with them and it makes those that agreed to be wiser than those that rejected the idea.
Since the formal introduction of education, it has been identified by some beneficiaries that education is a librating force, librating people from the crunches of illiteracy, superstition, inferiority complex and other barbaric actions. But inspite of all these advantages bequeathed to us by education, it has been infested and confronted with so many problems which among them include poverty.
Poverty has completely crippled the development of education in Nigeria. Right from time when education was formally established in the country with the imposition of some little amount of money on each student, many people who would have become the ambassadors and policy makers of this our country could not afford to pay such money then and it has absolutely jeopardized their future. The education at that time was left for few who were privileged to be born into royal family who were engaged in shabby business of slave trade or the family of wealthy farmers who supplies the European traders the raw materials they were looking for.
Rather, the government identified that it has a very big role to play about the education of its citizens. It was observed that the richness and greatness of country depend on the qualitative and quantitative education given to the citizens. Now, the government has been turned out to be an obstacle to education by one allotting a reasonable percentage of its revenue to the education of the citizens considering their improverished state.
The international communities have considered the plight of the citizens of the developing countries on their educational development and the difficulties poverty has posed on it. This can be manifestly seen through the activities of the UNICEF, an organ of the world body U.N.O. This therefore, examined the incidence on poverty educational development of the Nigeria citizens. Using Federal Polytechnic Idah student as a case study.
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The Federal Polytechnic Idah, Kogi state was established in year 1992 through the collective effort of the community as a self help project. It is located in the town Lokoja in the Idah local government area of Kogi state.
The concept, planning and establishment of the tertiary institution of learning were executed through the supported of the ministry of justice.
Initially, the institution was approved by the Kwara state governor as a college of arts and science in 1785. Then, in August 29, 1986, it was upgraded to college of arts, science and technology.
Later, in year 27th
August 1991, Kogi state was created out from the Kwara state, so the institution now is under Kogi state (in 1991)In 1992 the state government got the federal government approval to upgrade the state polytechnic Idah to federal polytechnic Idah. The government or governor on administration in that year (1992) was Alhaji Abubakar Audu.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The yardstick to measure the extent of the educational development of the citizen depends on the reasoning ability of the people. The behaviour, the approach to solving problems and the physical appearance of the citizens.
It is obvious that education is very essential especially now that almost everybody wants to be educated and enlightened. Many people want to be literate so as to be able to be informed because he who is not informed is definitely deformed and he who is deformed is abnormal.
Poverty as a problem does not go alone. It goes with numerous problem that could be completely inextricable from. It drags some other problem along such as mal-nutrition, low standard of living, shabby and tattered diseases. In other words all these problem hinges on poverty.
Moreover, with the observation of this problem, Baba Danjuma (2002) viewed that “the pauper lacks the resources to send his child to school. And even in communities where education is free, the pauper child still faces an uphill task because the hunger of the body impedes the proper nourishment of the mind”. From the above explanation, it could be seen that poverty hinders the proper growth and development of children intellectually, educationally, psychologically and otherwise.
Persons who have low per capital income will have their educational development impaired as they cannot have access to those things that make life worth a living. This study delved into how poverty affects educational development of the Nigerian citizen with a view to finding solution to it
1.3 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The primary exposes the threats and hindrances that poverty has posed on education development of the citizens.
To evaluate whether poverty is a condition that is desirable or undesirable and criteria for measuring poverty.
To ascertain whether the incidence of poverty on educational development is a seasonal or permanent experience.
To determine if the existence of poverty is caused by the citizens or the government or by both or either of them.
To determine and suggest how best to eradicate poverty and improved the standard of education acquisition among the citizens.
Finally, to let the citizens understanding the importance of education in their lives despite the financial constraints.
1.4 SIGNIFICANT OF THE STUDY
This research work is significant in the sense that it has exposed the needs for poverty alleviation in the country as it has to do with the life wire of the society and create better awareness about the threats poverty has posed on our education, other significance includes the following :-
This piece of work will help us to study how our country’s development policy can help to reduce the living incidence of poverty and subsequently improved the educational development of the citizens thereby eliminating the permanent or seasonal occurrence of poverty in the midst of its inhabitants. The knowledge gained in this study will help us to know the extent of the damage poverty caused educational development and ways through which the anomaly can be ameliorated.
At the end of the findings of this work, the government should be made to know that it has a role to play in the abridgement of the income inequality between the rich and the poor so that the latter could afford the training expenses of their wards.
1.5 RESEARCH QUESTION
1) Poverty only affects the educational development of the citizens or does it have facts of life that it trample upon.
2) How does poverty affect the performance level of Federal Polytechnic Idah student?
3) What effort have both internal and international government put in place towards ameliorating poverty and improving the state of education of the poor?
4) What does the poor do when they do not have access to education or when they do not or when they are deprived the right to education by poverty?
5) To what extent does deprivation of education of the poor affects the society negatively?
1.6 THE SCOPE OF THE STUDY
Because of the plethora of problem infesting this study, we have decided to concentrate only on the incidence of poverty on educational development of F.P.I students. It is pertinent to note that poverty affects other facts of human life for the purpose of this study the focus is on educational development.
1.7 DEFINITION OF TERMS
INCOME: This is the money one earns from the work one does or from investment one makes.
PER CAPITAL INCOME: This is the income which every individual is supposed to earn in a country. It is calculated by dividing the value of the National Income with the total number of people (population) in a country.
POVERTY: A state of having far less limited resources against numerous wants, where a person is incapable of providing all his basic necessities of life (clothes, shelter and food).
UNICEF: United Nations Children Fund.
UNO: United Nations Organization. A group made up of the rich and developed countries and some developing countries. It is established to take care of the world’s political and economic problems.