Appraisal of Rural Development Programmes in Imo State of Nigeria

Abstract

Poverty is universally acknowledged as a societal menace requiring urgent attention. It is largelyassociated with Africans particularly those in rural areas where a large proportion of the poor are found. This papersought to determine if government’s vision in halving poverty or eradicating extreme poverty in line with theMillennium Development Goals through its numerous newly created agencies and programmes actually matches withefforts and reality on the ground in the rural communities of Imo State. The data were obtained through fieldobservation, oral interviews, and questionnaire administration and a total of 211 households were served. The datareceived were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Findings revealed that the vision to reduce poverty is indeed thereby the presence of multifarious agencies and programmes in the state, but their extent of reach is poor as 82.5% haveno schemes in their community which could be said to have imparted to them or their family. Bad governance(43.1%) and corruption (37.0%) were the two greatest factors perceived by respondents as besetting the flow ofexpected deliverables from poverty reduction schemes. Strategies that would enable the rural poor to start benefitingsignificantly from those schemes were then suggested, in the light of the fact that intervention programmes are notonly insufficient but do not appear to be effective. Strategies such as the empowerment and monitoring of intermediatingfield workers, the re-kindling of spirit of family and self-help and the employment of tripartite participation inpoverty eradication should suffice.