Strategies for Alleviating Poverty in Nigeria

Abstract

The paper uses descriptive and analytical tools to identify the causes of poverty in Nigeria. To this end, a simple linear model of poverty is built to ascertain the strength of the causes of poverty such as unemployment, inflation and low income. The paper observes that unemployment, inflation and low income have significant impact on the level of poverty in Nigeria. The impact of poor health care and low literacy level was found to be statistically insignificant. Therefore, the paper concludes that to effectively alleviate poverty in Nigeria, both the public and private sectors must embark on employment generating programmes and activities; inflation must be controlled to ensure that it does exceed single digit; and the minimum wage should be increased substantially. Also the Federal Government should solve the petroleum products supply problem instead of deregulating the oil down stream. Deregulation will no doubt aggravate inflation and by extension poverty.

Keywords: Poverty, Development, Growth, Population, Unemployment.