Impact of Millenium Development Goals in Rural Communities in Nigeria
In what seems to be a global trend, most leaders of national governments place emphasis on the need for development at the grassroots as a foundation and prerequisites for national development. This practice is particularly prominent among authorities of developing nations like Nigeria, where there is an obvious divide in the quality of life between rural and urban dwellers. It is generally known that the qualities of life in rural areas are very deplorable, with poverty seething through every facet of rural endeavours. The worrisome aspect is the fact that majority of the citizens live in rural areas, where developmental efforts are very low compared to the urban areas, which usually witness heavy concentration of developmental strides, with the implicit assumption that its effect or impact will trickle down to the masses at the grassroots. However, this assumption has consistently proven wrong, as rural development remains a mirage, given the poverty level among rural dwellers.
It is an empirical truth that one of the characteristics of under-development is the high and persistent rate of poverty in these rural areas. For several decades, global discussions on third world countries often revolve around under-development, rooted in poverty and other related problems of disease, low literacy, hunger, unemployment, slow economic growth, infant and maternal mortalities among others.
The recent world’s attention focused on reducing income gap between the world’s richest and the world’s poorest nation is enshrined in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This is necessitated by the uneven distribution of global resources where the world richest 1% controls as much wealth as the poorest 57% of the population (Chua, 2003) Today 60% of the world 6.4 billion population live in abject poverty (Sampson, 2006).
Even though there are other mitigating factors, poverty remains the underlying factor plaguing rural development. Supporting this is the assertion that “poverty
It is an empirical truth that one of the characteristics of under-development is the high and persistent rate of poverty in these rural areas. For several decades, global discussions on third world countries often revolve around under-development, rooted in poverty and other related problems of disease, low literacy, hunger, unemployment, slow economic growth, infant and maternal mortalities among others.
The recent world’s attention focused on reducing income gap between the world’s richest and the world’s poorest nation is enshrined in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This is necessitated by the uneven distribution of global resources where the world richest 1% controls as much wealth as the poorest 57% of the population (Chua, 2003) Today 60% of the world 6.4 billion population live in abject poverty (Sampson, 2006).
Even though there are other mitigating factors, poverty remains the underlying factor plaguing rural development. Supporting this is the assertion that “poverty