STATE, INTERNATIONAL CAPITAL AND POVERTY IN MAIGANA

Nigeria is predominantly a rural environment that has been experiencing endemic and protracted crises. Since a national crisis is no other than the totality of its rural crises manifesting in, among others, a fall in rural productivity and income, chronic rural poverty, rural unemployment and under- employment, rural – urban migration, collapse of basic infrastructural needs etc. Maigana offers and demonstrates empirical insights into the practical condition of Nigeria’s rural malaise. Whereas analysis of the socio-economic setting of a rural community can not be complete and accurate without being placed within the orbit of the State and international capital, it is rather not unusual that the various World Bank/IMF ‘solutions’, adopted by the Nigerian State, further worsen the rural crisis. Maigana, one of the few rural communities where direct capitalist intervention was unleashed even before the direct colonial domination provides basic data for our analysis. It is perhaps too general and mundane to say that the prevailing rural situation in Nigeria’s countryside is that of stagnation and decay, apathy and despair; despite all the seeming attempts and massive investments pinned down to transform the rural environment. Thus, the growth in rural studies has considerably increased since the mid 1970s sequel t