An Integrated Approach to Rural Development in Nigeria

Abstract

Rural development practice in Nigeria has spanned over 10 decades from pre-independence to the current decade. This paper attempts a time-series review on rural development practice in Nigeria to see what has changed over a fairly long period of time. Various development plan periods have been examined in relation to rural development practice. The review shows that the greater part of public efforts on rural development was subsumed under agricultural development which was more exploitative to the rural resources and residents than improve their quality of life. Although relatively improved understanding of rural development manifested among policy makers beginning in the late 1980s, the paper argues that such understanding surprisingly did not translate into corresponding improvement in rural development practice because of several factors including weak institutional arrangements, corruption and absence of coordinated practice among competing agencies.

It is the view of this paper that in order to facilitate agricultural development, government should adopt an integrated rural development approach which is a multi-dimensional strategy for improving the quality of the life of the rural people. It concludes that rural development is imperative for improved of agricultural growth and development in Africa.

Keywords: Development, Rural area, Nigeria, Developing Economy, Agriculture.