Governance and Poverty Reduction An Appraisal of Government Policies and Programs of Poverty Reduction in Nigeria (2015-2019)

Abstract

The rate of poverty in Nigeria keeps rising despite the enormous human and natural resources. The apparent disconnection between Nigeria’s endowment in natural resources and the level of poverty has become worrisome to all. Currently, Nigeria is ranked amongst the poorest nations in the world. Statistics from a recent survey by the World Poverty Clock indicates that 93.7 million Nigerians now live in extreme poverty. To address the poverty issue, the successive Nigerian governments have designed various anti-poverty programs. Yet, the plethora of anti-poverty programs has not yielded significant improvement in Nigeria’s Human Development Index. Thus, this study evaluates the extent and impact of poverty reduction strategies in Nigeria. It explores the successes that have been achieved and the challenges that have been faced in Nigeria on poverty alleviation. The paper relied on secondary source of data and the elite theory was adopted to explain why poverty alleviation programs failed in Nigeria. The paper identified some of the reasons for the failure of the previous poverty reduction measures, programs and strategies as thus: absence of good governance, inconsistency in policies and programs, poor design and implementation, poor targeting of recipients, poor human capital development, corruption, inadequate funding, among others. The paper suggests that new poverty reduction strategies for Nigeria should be anchored on collaborative governance, productive job creation, empowerment scheme, consistency and commitment for effective implementation, infrastructural development, adequate funding of poverty programs, bottom-up approach, equitable distribution of resources and provision of micro credit schemes by the government.