Causes Of Poverty In Nigeria

1000 Words4 Pages
Poverty has become a serious problem in most developing countries across the globe because of numerous factors such as natural disasters, poor leadership, war and ethnic strive. The Federal poverty chart revels that almost sixty percent of Nigeria’s population of more than one hundred and fifty million individuals are drastically poor (Osedar, 2006). According to (Nkwede, 2006) most poor people settle mainly in rural areas, which parenthetically is the basic reason for the rural-urban migration in Nigeria. Indubitably, as the youths from the rural areas move to the urban area in search of white collar jobs this has many ramifications on the administration and development of a cosmopolitan government. Such consequences for the rural-urban migration are over population of public space and an increased level of corruption. According to the analysis by the Federal office of statistics in Nigeria report indicates that poverty has been in existence since the evolution of Nigeria as a country, the poverty level was at 27% in 1980 and rose up to 46 percent by 1985. After a moderate drop in 1992 to 43%, poverty escalated to 66% in 1996 (Osagie, 2007). Some factors were responsible for the increment in the poverty level in Nigeria such as deserting agriculture for petroleum economy, the mismanagement of the country’s resources by corrupt government officials and prolonged military dictatorship in the country (Igbuzor, 2006). Poverty is pervading throughout the country, while poverty