Three decades of persistent poverty in Nigeria: a historical-institutional perspective

The paper navigates a pluri-causal trajectory to explain why poverty in Nigeria persists de-spite relative economic growth and decades of implementing poverty alleviation pro-grammes. Several scholars of poverty in Nigeria enumerate corruption, political instability, unemployment, and poor educational system amongst a few others as the reasons for the persistence of poverty. The paper, however, argues that there is something deeper beyond these factors considered symptoms and hypothesise that certain institutional reasons and historical moments though compounded by these symptoms are responsible for the persis-tence of poverty in Nigeria. Utilising secondary analysis and by adopting a historical institu-tionalist perspective, this paper presents a trajectory depicting that certain historical moments portrayed through critical junctures in Nigeria’s historical timelines left legacies that did not end after the occurrence of the critical juncture but kept reproducing and influencing poverty dynamics. The mechanism of the legacy reproduction exists through institutions and actors within the political, economic and governance structures. The critical junctures discussed in this paper include the military coup in 1966 and the return to democracy in 1999. Through the analysis of economic policies and poverty alleviation/reduction programmes, also taking into consideration an institutional analysis, the paper discusses how the legacies of the critical junctures are visible in the implementation of policies and programmes.