Combating Poverty for Sustainable Human Development in Nigeria: The Continuing Struggle

Poverty is by all standards a condition of deprivation that impedes human development. Given Nigeria's vast resource base, she ordinarily should have no business with poverty. In fact, she should rank among the richest countries of the world. Ironically, the reverse has so far been the case. This article critically engages the perennial problem of poverty in Nigeria with emphasis on its impacts on human development. The article argues that the pervasiveness and persistence of poverty in the country is a massive betrayal of her rich resource base. The failure of antipoverty initiatives, with its attendant negative implications, may not be unconnected with the pervasiveness of perverse incentive structures that engender and nourish opportunism at the expense of a fairly even distribution of income and wealth. If the new initiatives must yield dividends, the article contends that the democratization process must be energized, the role of the state in the developmental process revisited, community self-help projects encouraged, and socioeconomic growth accelerated. Then human development can be attained and sustained.