The Impact of Poverty Alleviation Scheme on Human Development

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WorldEconomics ‹ › Home View web version Tuesday, April 20, 2010 Agbiokoro Timothy Chitua at 6:03 AM THE IMPACT OF NATIONAL POVERTY ERADICATION PROGRAMME (NAPEP) ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF NIGERIA CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY The concept of poverty and material deprivation is a critical one in contemporary social discussions. Social Sciences’ literature is replete with attempt by Economists and other Social Scientists to conceptualize the phenomenon. Poverty has economic, social and political ramifications. The poor are materially deprived, socially alienated and politically excommunicated. Basically, Poverty has been conceptualized in the following ways: a. Lack of access to basic needs/goods and b. Lack of or impaired access to productive resources. Poverty as lack of access to basic needs/goods is essentially economic or consumption oriented. Thus the poor are conceived as those individuals or households in a particular society, incapable of purchasing a specified basket of basic goods and services. Basic goods as used here include; food, shelter, water, health care, access to productive resources including education, working skill and tools, political and civil rights to participate in decisions concerning socio-economic conditions (Ajakaiye and Adeyeye 2001 in Gbosi, 2004). It is generally agreed that in conceptualizing poverty, low income or low consumption is its symptom. The level of poverty in Nigeria since the implementation of SAP in the 1980s has tremendously increased (UNDP Nigeria, 1998; FOS, 1999; World Bank, 1999). The poverty profile in Nigeria showed that the incidence of poverty increased from 28.1% in 1980 to 43.6% in 1985 but declined to 42.7% in 1992 and rose again to 65.6% in 1996 (FOS 1999). Since 1990 the country has been classified as a poor nation. The UNDP Human Development Indices (HDI) for 2001 ranked Nigeria the

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