Poverty drivers and Nigeria’s development: Implications for policy intervention

Several policies and programmes have been put in place to address the issue of poverty both in developing and developed countries of which Nigeria is not exempted. This study using data from World Development Indicators (WDI) for the period of 1992–2016 examined the key principles influencing poverty rate in Nigeria and their implications for policy interventions. The result of the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model using several equations showed that unemployment increases poverty by approximately 1.4, 1.5 and 3.3 percent in the short run while inflation reduces poverty by approximately 0.08 percent in the short run. This implies that unemployment causes poverty while inflation, public resources devoted to austerity programmes and economic growth reduces poverty in the short run. The study recommends that government should put in place adequate measures and conducive environment to encourage more business operations in the country.