Paper short abstract:

The major dimension of poverty is seen to be lack of access to assets, opportunities and markets. It is often taunted that making markets work better will enable the poor build their assets and productive resources and thereby alleviate poverty.

Paper long abstract:

The endemic and pervasiveness of poverty in Nigeria over time and across regions has been a fundamental issue facing the Nigerian people and government. Despite huge abundance of natural and human resources in Nigeria, the nation is riddled with many economic malaise including but not limited to poverty, non-inclusive economic growth, over-dependence on oil resources etc. Many attempts have been made in the past to revamp the economy but with minimal success. Most of these attempts bothered on economic programmes and policies which were hinged on orthodox economic theory. A typical example is the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) of 1986 which is basically hinged on the principle of invisible and the power of markets. The dynamism of the world; progress in science and technology (especially Information and Communication Technology); and the increasing inter-connection between economics, politics, psychology, sociology etc have elicited a strong paradigm shift from orthodox economic theory to rethinking alternative growth trajectories especially for Africa. Studies of poverty have shown that poverty is multidimensional with the causes and consequences interacting and reinforcing each other. However, the major dimension of poverty is seen to be lack of access to assets, opportunities and markets. It is often taunted that making markets work better will enable the poor build their assets and productive resources and thereby alleviate poverty. Our focus in this paper is to identify the particular market(s) that will alleviate poverty in Nigeria. We used econometric methods to stimulate which of the various markets have profound impact on poverty.