By Abdulrauf Aliyu
In October 2017, Emeritus Professor J. Afolabi Falola of Bayero University, Kano delivered his Professorial Inaugural Lecture titled “The Poor We Have With Us Always”. The title, borrowed from a familiar biblical passage, was enough to provoke reflection. Was Professor Falola suggesting that poverty is permanent? Was he resigning society to an unavoidable reality? Or was he challenging us to confront a truth we have long refused to acknowledge? Years after that lecture, and decades after I sat in his Rural Development class as a Master’s student in Development Studies, I believe his greatest contribution was not providing ready-made answers. It was compelling us to ask better questions.
Nigeria has spent more than six decades fighting poverty, yet poverty appears to be winning. Every administration launches a new intervention. Every government promises inclusive growth. Every budget allocates billions to one poverty reduction programme or another. Yet millions of Nigerians continue to wake each morning wondering not how to prosper, but how to survive another day. The paradox is painful. How does a country blessed with fertile land, energetic youth, mineral wealth and entrepreneurial talent continue to produce widespread deprivation?
Perhaps the problem is that we have misunderstood poverty itself. We often reduce it to income, forgetting that poverty is also about exclusion, limited opportunities, weak institutions, poor education, insecurity, inadequate healthcare and the absence of meaningful choices. A hungry farmer without access to markets is poor. A graduate without employable skills is poor. A community cut off by impassable roads is poor. A pregnant woman who dies because the nearest health facility is fifty kilometres away is poor. Poverty is not simply empty pockets. It is diminished possibilities.
One of Nigeria’s greatest development contradictions is that we have become increasingly urban while remaining structurally underdeveloped. Every year, thousands leave villages hoping cities will provide opportunity. Instead, many simply exchange rural poverty for urban hardship. The village may lack electricity, but the city lacks affordable housing. The farm may offer little income, but the city offers no jobs. The result is an expanding informal economy where survival replaces prosperity as the national aspiration. Development cannot simply be measured by growing cities if those cities are becoming larger centres of inequality.
This is why rural development deserves to return to the centre of national policy. Rural Nigeria should not merely feed urban Nigeria. It should become a place where people can build dignified lives. Every abandoned rural road increases food prices. Every neglected irrigation project weakens food security. Every extension worker removed from the field reduces agricultural productivity. Every school without teachers creates another generation trapped by circumstances rather than liberated by education. The future of Nigerian cities will ultimately depend on the future of Nigerian villages.
Yet governments often approach rural communities as beneficiaries instead of partners. Development is designed in conference rooms and delivered to communities rather than designed with them. We construct projects without cultivating ownership. We launch programmes without strengthening institutions. We distribute inputs without building markets. When donor funding ends or political administrations change, many interventions quietly disappear. Sustainable development cannot be imported into communities. It must emerge from communities themselves.
History offers remarkable lessons. Across many Nigerian communities, long before development agencies became household names, people organised communal labour to build schools, maintain roads, dig wells and support vulnerable families. They understood something modern governance sometimes forgets. Development is strongest when citizens believe they own it. Government should not replace community initiative. It should strengthen it. Development partners should not substitute for local leadership. They should invest in local capacity.
Agriculture presents another uncomfortable truth. For too long, Nigeria has equated agricultural development with seasonal distribution of fertiliser, seedlings and machinery. These interventions matter, but they are only fragments of a much larger system. A farmer needs secure land rights, affordable credit, extension services, rural roads, storage facilities, functioning markets, insurance against climate risks and predictable public policy. Remove one element and the entire chain weakens. Agriculture succeeds as an ecosystem, not as isolated interventions.
Education deserves equal attention. Every child excluded from school represents more than an individual tragedy. It represents lost productivity, weaker citizenship and diminished national competitiveness. Countries that transformed themselves economically did not merely build roads and bridges. They invested relentlessly in people. They recognised that classrooms are as important as highways, teachers as valuable as engineers and knowledge as strategic as natural resources. Nigeria cannot build a twenty-first-century economy with millions of children excluded from quality education.
Underlying all these challenges is the question of institutions. Nations rarely fail because they lack policies. They fail because institutions responsible for implementing those policies remain weak, politicised or inconsistent. Nigeria has produced impressive policy documents on agriculture, rural development, education, industrialisation and poverty reduction. What has often been missing is continuity. Every new administration introduces fresh priorities while abandoning programmes that have not yet matured. Development becomes cyclical rather than cumulative. We celebrate policy innovation while neglecting institutional consolidation.
Development partners also have important lessons to absorb. Too often, success is measured by funds disbursed, workshops organised or reports produced. Communities, however, judge development differently. They ask whether maternal deaths have fallen. Whether schools function. Whether roads remain passable during the rainy season. Whether young people can find decent work without migrating hundreds of kilometres from home. Sustainable development demands longer time horizons than typical project cycles. It requires patience, humility and genuine partnership with local institutions.
The lecture that inspired these reflections reminds us that poverty is neither inevitable nor insoluble. It persists because societies make choices about priorities, governance and justice. Nigeria does not suffer from a shortage of development plans. It suffers from a shortage of policy continuity, institutional discipline and political commitment. We have mastered the language of reform but not always the practice of transformation.
The path forward requires a different philosophy of governance. First, rural development must become a national economic strategy rather than a social welfare programme. Second, local governments should be empowered, professionally managed and held accountable as the frontline institutions of development. Third, agricultural policy must move beyond input distribution to building resilient value chains that connect farmers to markets, finance, technology and climate-smart practices. Fourth, universal quality education should be treated as the country’s most important long-term infrastructure investment. Fifth, every major development programme should be protected from political discontinuity through legislation, independent evaluation and transparent public reporting. Finally, community participation must move from being a slogan in policy documents to becoming the organising principle of development practice.
A wise farmer knows that harvest is determined long before the crops appear. It begins with preparing the soil, selecting good seeds, protecting young plants and patiently nurturing growth through every season. Nations are built the same way. If we continue scattering policy seeds on barren institutional ground, we should not expect abundant harvests. But if we cultivate capable institutions, empowered communities, educated citizens and accountable leadership, Nigeria may finally prove that while the poor have always been with us, they need not always remain among us.
