1.0   INTRODUCTION

Statistics on International Development 1998 – 2003 a publication of the British Department for information development holds that; one in five of the worlds population – two third of them rural women live in abject poverty. That is, without adequate food, clean water, sanitation, health and education. More than 24% of the population of the developing and emerging industrialized nations – live on less than US $1 a day. In Nigeria, particularly among the rural populace, poverty situation seems to be unabated with many wallowing in abject poverty. Poverty has placed over million of the rural populace in a totally danger of battle for survival, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture and the pangs of starvation.

Successive government through their poverty reduction programmes have tried to tackle the scourge of poverty but to no avail.

Therefore, the proposed research work will examine measures aimed at tackling poverty and the rural populace using Etinan Local Government Area as a case study.

1.1   STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Poverty situation in Nigeria seems, to be unabating. Amid political and economic instability, poverty in Nigeria has steadily grown worse since the first measured in 1980. Every sector of the Nigerian Society is caught by the web of poverty. The rural populace records the highest level of poverty. What is common in the sight of people living in squalor hunger and ulter destitution. The prevalence and ubiquity of poverty is competing favourably with the very air that we breath. Based on the above, the following questions are pertinent.

1. Why is poverty in the increase among the rural populace given the enormity of resources at the disposal of Local Government including the implementation of the various poverty eradication programmes?

1. Are these eradication programmes appropriate measures to tackling poverty among the rural populace?

iii.     What are the causes of poverty among the rural populace?

1.2   OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The main objective of this study is to examine the roof cause of poverty among rural populace.

Subsidiary objectives:

1. To examine various government programmes aimed at tackling poverty among the rural people to ascertain the extent to which such programmes has helped in poverty reduction.
2. To recommend appropriate measures or ways of tackling poverty among the rural populace.

• SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

1. To probe causes of poverty in Nigeria and why all the remedy efforts failed.
2. To add, by way of contributing to the extent literature on the area.

The following hypotheses shall be tested in the course of this study.

1. The scourge of poverty among the rural populace is directly related to lack of adequate education
2. There is a significant relationship between adequate identification of the cause(s) of poverty among the rural populace and appropriate prescription of remedy.