CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND
OF THE STUDY
The high poverty rates in rural Nigeria 90 beyond low
incomes, savings and growth because there are compounded by the high level of
ingenuity resulting from unequal access to income, opportunities and basic infrastructure.
In reaction to the horrendous poverty crisis in Nigeria, different
interventionist programmes have been established by successive governments.
Measures taken to combat rural poverty and promote rural development in the
country actually started at the beginning of Nigeria’s statehood.
Rural poverty is pervasive and its
reality manifest in worsening incidence and seventy despite the vast human and
natural resources, economic and development potentials the country is blessed
with, that should translate into better living standards. Evidences in Nigeria
show that the issue of poverty is multi-dimensional and encompasses issues such
as inadequate income, malnutrition, poor social and political status especially
in the rural areas (dowe, 2008). Both the quantitative and qualitative
measurements attend to the growing incidence and depth of poverty in the
country (FOS, 2003). This situation, however, presents a paradox considering
the vast human and physical resource that the country is endowed with. It is
even more disturbing that despite the huge human and material resources that
have been devoted to poverty reduction by successive governments, no noticeable
success has been achieved in the rural direction.
Poverty reduction scenarios vary
greatly depending upon the rate and nature of poverty related policies, actual
evidence suggests that the depth and severity of rural poverty is still at its
worst in Nigeria within the six geo-political regions, poverty is largely a rural
phenomena. Rural poverty also tends to be deeper than urban poverty in these
regions. It has become increasingly evident that within the Nigerian region,
the poor are heterogeneous and that some element of dynamics does exist with a
clear distraction between chronic and transitory poverty. Chronic poverty is considered
the component of total poverty that is static and transitory poverty component
that is attributable to the inter-temporal variability. The isolation of the
process underlying chronic and transitory poverty type may obscure the other or
even distort the effects of government anti- poverty programmes.
In Nigeria, rural poverty is
relatively high. A national poverty survey carried out indicates that southern
areas have moderate poverty while the northern regions have poverty levels that
are high (Okunmadewa et al, 2005, NBS, 2009). The average national poverty
incidence indicates that this situation has not improved during the last 20
years in a majority of sub-saharan African countries, Nigeria included.
For centuries, rural households are
marginalized in terms of most basic elements of development such as educational
and recreational facilities, healthcare facilities electricity portable water
and motorable roads. They experience high population rates, high infant and
maternal mortality rates low life expectancy and a peasant population that
lacks modern equipment that can guarantee sustainable exploitation of the
natural resources on which they live.
The poverty situation in Nigeria is
galloping. The scourge is geometrically increasing, the fight against poverty
has been a central plank of development planning since independence in 1960 and
about fifteen ministries fourteen specialized agencies, nineteen donor agencies
and non-governmental institutions have been involved in decades of the is crusade
but 70 percent of Nigerians still live in poverty (Soludo, 2003), The failure to
festively combat the problem has largely been blamed on infrastructural decay,
endemic Compton, poor governance and accountability (Omotola, 2008, Adesopo,
2008, Okonjo-(Weala, Soludo and Muwtar, 2003). With the recognition of
agriculture dependent livelihood, the weaknesses of human capabilities,
inequality exclusion and adverse incorporation, of conflict resource curse among
rural Nigerians, the escape from this is tied up in a sustainable feasible and
implementable programmes which can be improved through the incorporation of
covariate risks which will not necessarily be the same across regions and
states.
In the Northern region, rural
poverty occurring is characterized by religion conflicts, women discrimination
from participation in certain type of work, illiteracy and low recreational facilities,
conflict resource curse among northern teenagers which continue to degenerate growth.
In Southern region, rural poverty, is characterized by agriculture dependent
lively-hood corruption, low educational standard, low vocational and technical education,
ethic conflicts and migration from rural to urban centimes in search of white
collar jobs.
Indeed, poverty in rural Nigeria is
determined by unemployment, our-indebtedness, economic dependence, family size,
inability to poverty the basic needs of life, lack of access to land and
credit, low level of educational standard and inability to own asset/
1.2 PROBLEM
STATEMENT
There is a growing evidence that the rural Nigeria has
continued to worsen despite its natural resource endowment the determinants of
rural poverty is subtle and complex. It has already been established that rural
poor are marginalized in terms of most basic elements of development.
Budding on recent literature, on
rural poverty, they are often considered as those earning below a particular income
recognized as the minimum amount required to provide the basic necessity for
living. It entails lack of access to a range of basic services and
infrastructure which includes education, health and farm inputs. Majority of
rural Nigeria do not have access to the guilty and variety of food needed for a
health living and fall below poverty line. Past studies (Onah, 1996, world
bank, 2010) have established that most rural households are poor in Sub-Saharan
Africa.
The central banks of Nigeria (2012)
notes that under the present administration, the depth and seventy of poverty
is still at its worst in rural Nigeria and that poverty reduction rate are at
25.1 percent to 33.4 percent during the years 2000 and 2010.
Thus, poverty denies the rural
Nigerians the quality of life and the acquisition of basic needs. It makes the
rural poor remain vulnerable to hunger. It therefore follows that it is
necessary to problem into what makes rural Nigeria have different segments in
terms of demographic of the commodity in which the rural households resides.
In this study, we are interested in
generating a vulnerability to rural poverty of the different segments of rural
households in Nigeria. Vulnerability profiles of this type can be useful illustrative
devices in the discussions of policy priorities among such segments of rural
population in Nigeria.
In view of the fact that Nigeria
government have provided a lot of strategies to reduce poverty in the country,
both theoretical and empirical literature have failed to capture the real factors
that determines the rural poverty and as well, why the poverty rate of rural Nigeria
is still high. The dearth of knowledge on generating venerability to poverty profiles
are among different segments of rural populations and discriminating between different
sources of vulnerability to poverty is a major policy challenge in Nigeria.
Therefore, the study is interested in supplying the information lacking on these
vulnerability to rural poverty issues.
1.3 OBJECTIVES
OF THE STUDY
The broad objective of this study is to deepen our
understanding of variables that determines rural poverty in Nigeria. More
specifically,
a. To
determine present measures of poverty (Headcount, size, education, sex)
overtime, in different regions.
b. To
access household characteristics and regions specific risks that affect rural
poverty in Nigeria the country.
c. To
investigate vulnerability profile using expected poverty measures of different
segments of rural population
d. To
access quantitatively and qualitatively the rural household determinates of
poverty taking region specific risk into account.
1.4 RESEARCH
HYPOTHESES
One major hypothesis that will be tested by this study
is as follows;
1. The
characteristics of rural households and regions specific variables (Headcount,
size, sex, Education) do not affect rural poverty in Nigeria.
2. The
household income and expenditure do not determine poverty rate among rural
Nigeria.
1.5 SIGNIFICANCE
OF THE STUDY
Previous studies conducted submit that there is a
plethora of literature on the concept of poverty. This condition explains the
complexity involved in the conceptual analysis and dissection of poverty
overtime, successive government in Nigeria have embarked on anti poverty
programmes directed at the rural poor and opening up the nations economic base
towards greater responsiveness to growth and development. This work is premised
on the need to examine the determinants of rural poverty in Nigeria.
The study will serve as a source of
information for policy makers and stakeholders in the poverty alleviation
programme.
The rural areas are essentially the
areas which lack basic urban facilities in the form of physical structures, modern
equipment, distinctive settlement and non-urban environment. In this regard,
the study will guide the government and its agencies in implementing policies
aimed at improving rural Nigeria.
The study will, as well, be helpful
to the general public and any one who might be interested in the research
concerning rural poverty.
The findings of the research and the
recommendations contained therein will add more literature to the existing
ones.
1.6 SCOPE
OF THE STUDY
This study is intended to cover the six
(6) region specifics of the determinants of rural poverty in Nigeria. The study
will focus on the rural areas of the six (6) geo-political zones in the
country. The study shall make use of data from 1995 to 2010, a total of fifteen
(15) years.
CHAPTER THREE
METHODOLOGY
3.1 MODEL
SPECIFICATION
There are two main approaches in
modeling the determinant of rural poverty. The first is to model the
determinants of the indicator of welfare using household expenditure as a
measure of good standard of living using the ordinary least square (OLS)
estimation technique. The approach, we classify all households into the poor
and shall make use of FGLS approach to estimate the determinants of rural
household consumption. For emphasis sake, this is represented below;
Assuming that the stochastic
approach generating consumption of a household is given by
INCL = Xh + eh
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