Nigeria as the Poverty Headquarters of the World: Implications for Her National Development and Relationship with External World

Abstract

Nigeria is an African country located on the Gulf of Guinea with many landmarks and wildlife reserves. She is blessed with arable land, natural resources and human capital. Before independence in 1960, Nigeria depended on Agriculture as her mainstay. She was exporting agricultural products and feeding her citizens from agriculture which also provided employment for a large number of her populations. However, when crude oil was discovered in Nigeria in the late 1950s, Nigeria began to earn high revenue from crude oil which became her major source of earning foreign exchange. Nigeria began to neglect agriculture and its products as areas of revenue earning, making her mono-economy in nature. The citizens became uninterested in engaging in agriculture for employment. Steady increase in the populations especially in the urban areas outrageously led to continuous rise in poverty of the citizens in Nigeria. This situation continues to slow down her developmental efforts and also affects her relationship with the external world. This occasioned the reasons why Nigeria is being described as the poverty headquarters of the world. This has provoked several questions on how Nigeria that is supposed to be the giant of Africa, found herself in the present situation of being the poverty headquarters of the World. This study therefore investigated Nigeria as the poverty headquarters of the world and its implications for her national development and relationship with external World, focusing on the concept of poverty, National development, the indices of a poor nation and the characteristics of Nigeria economy. The study is a qualitative research that relied on secondary source of data and anchored on dependency theory as its theoretical framework of analysis. The study revealed that the poverty nature of Nigeria as a nation has overbearing implications for her national development and her relationship with the external world. The paper therefore recommended that Nigeria should strategically reduce corruption to the barest minimum and initiate good policies that can reduce poverty in the long- run. There is need for effective monitoring of public finances and diversification of economic activities from mono-resource economy so as to create opportunities of empowerment for Nigerians.