EVALUATION OF THE IMPACT OF ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY ON POVERTY ALLEVIATION

The study evaluates the impact of Taraba State Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy on poverty alleviation in the state. The study adopted a correlational design method and uses data obtained from secondary sources. It uses longitudinal regression model to examine the impact of investment in agricultural sector, investment in small and medium scale enterprises, and jobs created by the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) on poverty alleviation in Taraba state. The study reveals that investment in agricultural sector is positive and insignificant in alleviating poverty in Taraba state, while jobs created by the NDE reveals a positive and insignificant relationship with poverty alleviation in Taraba state. Only investment in small and medium scale enterprises shows a negative and significant relationship with poverty alleviation in the state. The study concludes that it is only investment in SMEs that majorly explain the variation of poverty alleviation in Taraba state. It is recommended that target segment of the people should be made aware of the benefit of the poverty alleviation schemes and proper monitoring should be put in place, to ensure that fund allocated for investment in major sector of the state’s economy to alleviate poverty are not diverted.

Poverty is a global problem found in different parts of the world albeit with different causes and at various levels; which gives rise to various approaches to poverty alleviation strategies that depend on each country‟s antecedents. Whereas poverty in the United States is seen as a result of failings at the structural, social and economic level (Rank, 2013), it is seen in most African nations as caused by low level of production and production capacity, most especially in the agricultural sector which accounts for most of the employment and a large share of the GDP (Ibrahim, Mahmood and Umar, 2011).Nigeria is the most populous African country; it has a high poverty rate of 69% in 2013 and rising unemployment rate of 19.7 in 2009, 21.5 in 2010, 23.9% in 2011 and 24.3 in 2014(NBS, 2014). The North East geo-political zone to which Taraba state belongs, has 69% poverty rate as at 2010 (see appendix 4) which makes the zone second only to the north central zone that has 70% rate (Aiyedogbon and Owhofasa, 2012). Nigeria is the 152nd country on the Human Development Index in 2014 and the 22nd in Africa, far below Ghana, Sao Tome and Equatorial Guinea, who are ranked 13th 16th and 17th respectively (HDI, 2014). In order to alleviate poverty, Nigeria embarked on economic empowerment programs from the 1970‟s. These include the Green Revolution, Operation Feed the Nation (OFN), Nigerian Agricultural, Cooperatives and Rural Development Bank, (NACRDB) (now Bank of Agriculture, BOA), National Directorate for Employment (NDE)