Dysfunctional Sectors, Quality Of Life And The Rate Of Poverty In Nigeria: An Exploratory Outlook

A sector is said to be dysfunctional when it operates abnormally or outside certain set rules and norms. This was the case with the agricultural, industrial and service sectors which are the key economic sectors in Nigeria. And this abnormality has in turn impacted negatively on the living standard of the people of the country. On the bases of that, this chapter, therefore, examined the dysfunctional nature of some of the sectors and their impact on the quality of life of the people and the rate of poverty in Nigeria. In furtherance, the chapter also provided an insight into the performance of the key sectors in Nigeria between 1960 and 2020 and an insight into the quality of life of the people and the state of poverty in Nigeria. Also examined were the intriguing factors that undermined the performance of these sectors in improving the life of the people and in reducing poverty in Nigeria. The factors examined were the inconsistency and instability in the key macroeconomic variables (inflation and foreign exchange rates), inadequate economic freedom, high level of corruption, inadequate ease of doing business in the country, the fragility of the nation in terms of security, inadequate peace, insufficient entrepreneurial and innovative capabilities and a weak ability of the country to reach a high level of prosperity. For instance, none of the indexes of these variables was above 55 percentage points or close to 100 percentage points that would have qualified the country as economically sound or viable. Even the index of prosperity was also less than 50 percentage points over a decade (i.e. from 2009 to 2020), thus suggesting that the quality of life of the people is poor. The governance structure of the country is also poor as portrayed by the governance indicators (control of corruption, government effectiveness, political stability and absence of violence, regulatory quality, rule of law and voice and accountability) used in this study. The indexes of the governance indicators were negative and far below the plus (+) 2.5 point earmarked as the best possible score for good governance. To address the dysfunctional structure of the sectors of the Nigerian economy and their inability to improve the life of the people and reduce poverty in Nigeria requires a comprehensive overhaul of the economic structure of the country including the character and attitude/behaviour of the people of the country.