Strategies for Poverty Reduction in Nigeria

Poverty remains widespread within Nigeria. This is no longer a controversial subject. What is controversial is the choice of appropriate strategies for poverty reduction. The major suggestions are that the strategies must be multidimensional and for all the strategies recommended earlier on to work, the society needs to be committed, disciplined and consistent with all the ideals that have been stipulated. This is because poverty reduction cannot come by accident by through conscious and concerted efforts. Since poverty is largely a social problem rather than individual dispositional, society has to address it critically, severally and simultaneously at all fronts. It is in recognition of this that various strategies comprising of economic, political, social, agricultural and ideological policy options were suggested. It is envisaged that all these strategies will definitely help to reduce the incidence of poverty to a large extent in Nigeria if adopted and implemented accordingly. Again, all the strategies suggested are mutually reinforcing. Our final thesis is that policy must simultaneously address the broad range of fundamentals that we have shortlisted earlier as all of them are mutually reinforcing and do not work in isolation. There is no doubt that Nigeria has adequate capacity to implement these suggestions.