CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1Background of the study
Poverty and unemployment are two evils that weigh on the Nigerian state at present. Reports from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) (2005) show that "the poor population has steadily increased from 17.7 million in 1988 to 66.7 million in 2004." In 2010, the National Bureau of Statistics reported that 60.9% of Nigerians lived in poverty. The World Poverty Ratchet in 2018 declared that Nigeria had adopted the despicable position of being the world capital of poverty after having overtaken India, with about 86.9 million people in extreme poverty (Vanguard, 2019). To corroborate this statement, the National Bureau of Statistics in the National Base Survey of 2012 postulates that more than half of Nigeria's young population in the country is unemployed.
Poverty and the unemployment rate continue to rise vertically, resulting in social problems of more monumental and complex proportions, trying to challenge popular government interventions to improve them. Since 1999, each government has had its signature, reducing poverty or reducing poverty, whatever it is called. The government of President Olesegun Aremu Obasanjo (1999-2007) launched the National Program for the Eradication of Poverty (NAPEP), which aims to reduce poverty. According to Anyebe (2015), NAPEP was established in 2010 as the lead agency of the federal government to eradicate extreme poverty in Nigeria. The main program of this program includes the Youth Empowerment Program and the National Resource Conservation and Development Program. The author also revealed that, despite the enormous financial implications of these programs, poverty and youth unemployment persisted.
Subsidy reinvestment program (SURE P), designed and implemented by President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan (2012-2014). The main SURE-P program for poverty reduction includes: Traffic System, Vocational Training Program and Community Service / Employment of Women and Youth (CSWYE). This initiative has been severely criticized for its lack of transparency and corruption on a large scale. Abu (2015), in a study on the program of reinvestment of subsidies and job creation in Nigeria (2012-2014), concluded that the program had not left unemployed the creation of employment in Nigeria. Youth and poverty on a large scale in the country remained high.
The response of several administrators to the problems of poverty seems to have been largely ad hoc and uncoordinated. A recent survey on policies and interventions describes 28 federal projects and programs focused on poverty reduction. Several state governments have also launched programs to reduce poverty.
With the advent of a democratic government in 1999, measures were adopted to rationalize institutions related to poverty, review previous programs against poverty and harmonize sectoral efforts. Although none of these programs was completely unfounded, none of them had a significant positive effect, lasting or lasting.
Hence the imperative need to critically analyze several poverty reduction programs and their achievements in the development of our community. It is hoped that the results of this study will provide useful strategies that, once adopted, would have the impact of poverty alleviation programs on community development.