CONCEPTUAL AND THEORETICAL ISSUES IN POVERTY, AND A REFLECTION ON THE POVERTY

Poverty is major way of describing economic hardship and degradation of human dignity: it is a major socio-economic ill which afflicts a great number of people across the world. This paper highlights some major conceptual, theoretical and mythological issues, and it reflects on the poverty and competitive situation in Nigeria. The paper employs verbal constructs and tabular presentations in its exposition. Poverty affects many aspects of human condition including physical, psychological, social and even spiritual. Thus a concise and universally accepted definition of the menace has been elusive. However, the commonest and the most popular practice is to conceptualize poverty in absolute terms which implies the inability to afford basic necessities of life at minimum acceptable levels. The theories of poverty in general show that the phenomenon is multidimensional or multifaceted. This paper points out that Nigeria is plagued with pervasive poverty, high level of underdevelopment, poor performance of the manufacturing sector and poor level of competitiveness, among others. The paper therefore recommends, among other things, that adequate investment be made on human capital development and steps be taken to boot Nigeria’s manufacturing sector so that absolute poverty be eliminated and economic sustained