Imperativeness of Stakeholder’s Collaboration For Sustainable Rural Development in Nigeria

Lack of sustainable rural development in rural communities of Nigeria has been blamed on lack of support from the government and other development agencies which has placed rural communities in a deplorable state. A cross-sectional research design was adopted for the study where a structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 400 sampled population size. The communities were sampled using simple random sampling while systematic random sampling was used to determine the number of respondents from each community. From the findings, the rural people identified leadership development skills, enhanced community participation in rural projects, capacity building and initiating effective conflict control mechanism in rural areas as areas they need assistance from the government and other development agencies. It has been concluded that it is imperative to promote grass root development and to improve the lives of rural dwellers through the collaboration of both the rural people and stakeholders in the development process. This will promote inclusive governance and confer ownership rights over rural development policies on rural dwellers. The paper recommends, among others, the need for government and development partners to focus their support on what the rural people identified as their development oriented needs.