Sectoral Approach to Poverty Alleviation in Nigeria, 1980-2010

Abstract

Poverty is a global phenomenon. United Nation's declaration of 1966 as the International Year for the eradication of Poverty was a clarion call on the international development community to focus on poverty eradication. A survey by the Federal Office of Statistics in 1996 put 65.5% of Nigerians as living in poverty. Though this reduced to 54% in 2004, it remained an unacceptably high percentage. This paper attempted a historical survey of Federal Government efforts at eradicating poverty since 1980up to 2010 through sectoral programmes such as agriculture, health, transport, housing and finance with a view to identifying suitable poverty alleviation programmes in Nigeria. Available secondary and internet sources were synthesized with oral interviews to examine how successful these programmes had been and how they could be effectively sustained but it discovered that for various reasons, many of the programmes failed to achieve much despite massive investments. Hence, poverty remained endemic. The paper concluded that until there is genuine government commitment to addressing the root causes of poverty and adhering strictly to the execution of programmes designed with the collaboration of all the relevant stakeholders, government efforts may remain futile.