As Nigeria experiences the major thrust of urban growth, urban poverty has become the most intractable phenomenon attracting the attention of concerned observers. The movement of people from the rural areas to urban centres has posed lots of challenges to many both the leaders and the led on its effects on the limited resources available in the cities.

Residents of the rural areas who also assumed that much can be attained in the cities in terms of improvement on their standards of living, do forfeit whatever they have in the rural areas in terms of investment interest in pursuit of a “better life” in urban regions.

In this piece, my emphasis will be on evaluating the relationship between rural-urban migration and its effect on urban poverty in Nigeria .

While most people believe that leaving the rural areas for the cities will enhance their socio-economic status, it is also my belief that the reverse can be the case as the new life can make them unfit to join as a result of the value system in the cities, standard of living and cost of living.

Migration can both cause and be caused by poverty. Similarly, poverty can be alleviated. Basically, I will look at poverty in two ways according to Webster Dictionary as “unproductiveness/deficiency or inadequate supply”… {That is lack in the face of need}

 In our society, the head of the family who fails to provide for the family faces not just the risk of loosing self esteem but the threat of family dislocation and disorientation, which in turn erodes loyalty, community influence and equal access to institutions of expression. It is also my view that most journeys to the cities in search of the proverbial “golden fleece” can relatively be linked to of loss of confidence in ones abilities as certain regression of values threaten to swallow the people’s confidence in them. And when people are faced with the failure of self-esteem, the downward journey of the creativity and productivity of the greater number is predictable. Why it appears urban poverty is being to cause by rural-urban migration is because, so much people are dependent on limited resources.

When a man in the urban centre is unable to meet up with the challenges facing his family in terms of sending his children to good schools, good food, little or no access to electricity as a result of his inability to pay for these services and his inability to pay for a good health care which in turn leads to deprivation and powerlessness. In a similar situation, a person in the rural area might be able to have access to some of these facilities. If it has been taken into cognizance by authorities, some of the people in our rural areas might be living above the poverty line as stated by the United Nations standard which is two dollars per day. Infact, some of those in the cities have been emeshed in the poverty of ideas and as a result, cannot produce much.

 Beyond these basic challenges vis-a- vis the unpronounced affirmation that man must perform whether good or not, there are now so much complexity of the social-economic cum political environment that man may have faced the severest of pressures, not necessarily for the reality of the polity and the activities of other factors of modern life. The picture of impoverishment in the urban areas leaves a gasp in the breathe of the right thinking man. Usually, the tendency to resign to fate in the rural areas is not the case in the urban areas where severe impoverishment induces such social vices as crime, prostitution, gambling, alcoholism, vandalism, thuggrey and other anti-social activities, most of which brings about social tension and instability.

There are viable opportunities in our rural areas that will enhance the status of the local people if properly harnessed. It is my belief that urban poverty can be caused relatively by the activities of rural-urban migration.

There are quite opportunities in the rural areas where the rural inhabitants have comparative cost advantage and as a result do supply some of their products to the urban centre for the urban dwellers to consume at any cost . It is my opinion that some of those in the urban areas can be in a form of partnership with the local producers in terms of technical inputs into their productive efforts as some of the urban dwellers may not like relocating to the rural areas. If we can believe as has been seen in some other areas that development is not synonymous with our cities alone even as democracy is not synonymous with economic development. For instance, the steps taken by Mahatma Ghandi reforming India and the work by Lee Kaun yew in His “From third to First World : The Singapore story”. Some major towns we know today were formerly villages and I believe that with the establishment of productive avenues like markets, schools will promote the attainment of desired values and expectations.

The movement of people from the rural areas to the urban centres has endangered the actual provisions made by established institutions for the occupants of the urban zones. The pressure on the limited facilities in the urban centres has led to people getting involved in some nefarious activities for sustenance and thereby subjecting their standard of living and that of their wards to a limited state; whereas, the reverse is the case in the rural areas. Overcrowding in the cities at the expense of limited opportunities can show that rural-urban migration has impact on the high rate of poverty in our urban centres.

Rural-urban migration alters planning and utilities allocation and to effectively curb this menance, adequate measures should be in place so that the gap between the rural and urban dwellers can be minimized as we certainly may not be able to stop our budding youth in the village from going to the cities just as we cannot guarantee full services of our public utilities in the face of the pressure of sudden entries into the cities.

I believe that one significant reason for the heightening of poverty in our land is total disorientation which is the lot of people who cannot even appreciate the complexity of this deafening petro-dollar economy. Therefore, various agencies that were established like NAPEP, PAP, NDE, and especially the National Orientation Agency {NOA} among others should be more active and strengthened so that poverty can be reduced in our land.

ezenwosu2001@yahoo.com, thelight2030@yahoo.com

Robot  # 1 | 11.08.2008 23:30

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