Nigeria’s dream of achieving the Millennium Development Goals MDGs may not come true unless the country adopt a polycentric and poverty reduction strategy to combat extreme poverty and hunger.
This was the submission of the Acting Head of Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Osun state University, Prof. Samson Akinola who warned that eradication of poverty and hunger may remain a mirage in the country contrary to claims by the federal and state governments to the implementation of the MDGs programs.
Akinola in a paper titled, “The logic of planning process and security challenges in Nigeria: A polycentric planning and poverty reduction strategy” delivered Wednesday in Owerri, at the 44th annual conference of Nigerian Institute of Town Planners, NITP said “in spite of the declaration by Nigerian governments to abide by the MDGs’ poverty reduction incentives, they are yet to understand how to engage institutional mechanisms and polycentric development planning to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.”
According to him, the bane of the development planning and poverty eradication in Nigeria was largely a case of institutional dilemma, saying there was an absence of appropriate institutional mechanisms to motivate most Nigerians to work together as partners.
While saying that the nation’s economy was in disarray, Professor Akinola, however, argued that government officials, scholars, industrialists, the organised private sector and peasant farmers, operated on parallel lines.
