Rural Economic Development: Policy Implementation in Nigeria

The rural society has been imperative in the supply of both humans and materials required by various sectors of every economy. But successive authorities are predisposed to neglect If not relegate to the background this goose that lays the golden egg in terms of sustenance and development. Oftentimes policies initiated for its development is not adequately and effectively implemented. Therefore, this paper is an attempt at acceptable mechanism for developing and implementing policies for rural emancipation. The paper adopted the exploratory research approach involving the use of secondary source with minimal primary source to generate data through questionnaire and interview guide. The paper observes that the problem is not the lack of effective policy/programme initiation and formulation but the dearth of the political will to implement; high incidence of corruption; complete absence of purposive leadership; misguided and misdirected priority; placing the wrong person at the strategic position; inconsistency and absent of continuity in policy/programmes implementation in government affairs. For a way out amongst others, involvement of the benefiting rural/urban communities in monitoring the implementation of programmes or project execution in their domain is important while avoiding the pitfall of role conflict in policies and programmes formulation cum implementation.