A Struggle Against Underdevelopment in the Geography of Rural Terrorism in South-South Nigeria

Abstract

Two major pictures commonly associated with rural South-South Nigeria are poverty and spatial underdevelopment. Efforts of successive government to address these two nightmarish problems had not yielded much success. While the search for lasting solution among policy makers and academic scholars is still on, a new phenomenon called “rural terrorism” has suddenly emerged in the rural geography of South-South Nigeria. Rural terrorism though new in this part of the globe has become a plague in rural South-South Nigeria. Serious questions have emerged in research circle as to the ‘why’ and ‘how’ as it relates to “rural terrorism”. Through a clinical research, this paper was able to established that the birth and spread of “rural terrorism” was a response by the youths of the area to the geography of spatial and economic underdevelopment of the region; a means to survival in an economically poor and socially backward region. This paper has suggested that increased investment in the socio-economic development of the region will help in curbing this menace. This work is a product of the combination of intense field work and the work of previous scholars relating to the subject matter.

Keywords: Terrorism, Rural, South-South, Poverty, Nigeria