Poverty reduction strategies and national development in Nigeria

Abstract

The study on poverty reduction strategies and national development in Nigeria sets out to evaluate the effectiveness of the poverty reduction strategies on improving national development of Nigeria between 1999 and 2015. The proposition of the study stated that poverty issues were endemically a political challenge and that poverty reduction strategies were merely a technical response that cannot reduce poverty. The qualitative research approach based on conceptual and normative analyses of data was adopted whilst the theoretical framework used was dependency theory. The study found that despite the several poverty reduction programmes embarked on, some multi-sectoral while others were sector specific, the poverty incidence in Nigeria was steadily on the increase thus validating the proposition that poverty reduction strategies of the World Bank and IMF are merely technical responses to a fundamentally political challenge. The study recommended that the World Bank, IMF, donor and aid agencies as well as the poor countries should understand the impact of politics on poverty as such emphasize political reforms alongside poverty reduction strategies in order to deal with poverty reduction in the Third World.