Rural Development Programme Under Military Regime

Introduction

1.1 Background to the Study

Rural Development Programme has been identified as a strategy and an instrument for ensuring sustained economic growth and development. Modern states have necessarily adopted it in tackling, transforming and improving the numerous problems of rural poverty, socio-economic inequality, hunger, illiteracy and disease. The large gap between potential economic opportunities and realized development in the rural sector is explained by the motivation of those who control the allocation of national resources and who allocate these resources thereby causing under-utilization, non-use and misuse of natural human and financial resources. It would appear that the greatest obstacle to successful rural development in Nigeria can be traced to the character of the political leadership that is not committed to rural transformation and the absence of a developmental ideology, Olatunbosun (1995:57).
Before the oil boom, agriculture was the main stay of Nigerian economy. These agricultural products that made Nigeria what it was during the pre-colonial, colonial and post – colonial periods were mostly from the rural areas.
Therefore, in efforts at developing rural areas in the past, the Federal Government in the third National development plan introduced such programmes as the National Accelerated Food Production Programme (NAFPP), the River Basin Development Authorities and the Integrated Rural Agricultural Development Projects