Poverty and Environmental Safety in Nigeria: A Sustainable Development Perspective

Abstract

The level of safety in a country is a yardstick for it potential growth and sustainable development. If the environment is not safe, there will be no viable economic activity going on and thus the level of poverty and inequality in such environment will be high. Amidst of the unsafe environment, there is usually some group of people benefiting from such political economy scenario. Such group will therefore wish to continue to benefit from such environment at the expense of the larger society thereby creating deeper poverty gaps. The question this paper seeks answer is; to what extent is Nigeria’s environment safe for sustainable development to take place as a recipe for developing countries? The relative deprivation theory is used to establish the fact that deprivation of the people in an environment leads to inequality and poverty. This deprivation hinders rapid socioeconomic and political activities to take place by creating an unsafe political economy environment which as well affects sustainable development. Data from Afrobarometer database on Nigeria were examined, analysed and interpreted. The paper concludes that making the environment more secure for economic activities reduces poverty and inequality. The study recommends that an equitable distribution of income should be enforced first to the immediate environment whose land was usurp and then to the other federating units.