Development Policies and Poverty Reduction in Nigeria

Nigeria is not referred to as the Poverty Capital of the World for lack of development policies. Even before the Second Republic, various regimes, have initiated brilliant development policies aimed at positioning the country as real Giant of Africa; as opposed to the demographic giant that we are on the continent today. The country is endowed with enormous human and material resources that could be harnessed for the benefit of the citizenry. But failure on the part of our leaders has led to the staggering level of poverty that inundates the land, especially, the country side. Sadly, poverty is not a phenomenon that can be cast away through prayers; or wished away; neither can development be achieved in the realm of desirability. It takes conscious planning, dogged and pragmatic efforts to conquer these phenomena. The paper adopts the Human Capital Theory by Gary Becker and Jacob Mincer as its theoretical framework. The theory is apt because it prescribes education, training and skills acquisition as mechanisms for attracting productivity, workers’ efficiency and overall socio-economic development. The work will take a cursory look at development policies initiated by past regimes, from the Second Republic till date. In that light, poverty reduction in Nigeria shall be viewed through the prism of the impact of the development policies experimented over the years. The study shall also look at the challenges that these policies faced in course of their implementation. The causes of the failures of these well-intended policies shall be looked into and recommendations to ameliorate the problems shall be given.