Impact of Micro and Small Business Entrepreneurship on Poverty Reduction in Ibadan Metropolis, South Western Nigeria

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)IntroductionWith a population of 140 million, Nigeria is recognised as most populous country in Africa, accounting for 47% of West Africa's population (World Bank 2007). Although an oil -rich country, a significant population of Nigeria lives in poverty. Handley, Higgins and Bhavna (2009) noted that approximately 70 million people in country, live on less than US$1/day [World Bank and Department for International Development (DFID), 2005], 54% of Nigerians live below poverty line United Nations Development Programme (UNDP 2006) and over one-third live in extreme poverty (i.e. those who cannot afford 2900 calories per day) (UNDP, 2006). The country's poverty situation has grown worse. According to National Bureau of Statistics (NBS 2012) by 2010 number of people in poverty moved to 112.5 million. With this, 69% of population lived below poverty line.There are suggestions from a number of contemporary studies that implicate unemployment in persistence poverty (Sanders, 2002; Park, Wang and Wu, 2002). Since unemployment has also been identified as both a driver and maintainer of poverty in Nigeria (Handley, et al. 2009; Meagher and Yunusa, 1996), it is instructive to highlight trends in unemployment in Nigeria over years. This may help appreciate reason for persistence poverty in Nigeria. Unemployment in country has been on consistent rise for ten years between 2002 and 2011. It only dropped from 13.4 per cent in 2004 and to 11.9 per cent in 2005. But from 2006, it has been on ascendancy again, moving from 12.3 per cent in that year to 23.9 per cent in 2011 (NBS 2010; NBS 2011).The task of reducing poverty in Nigeria has been herculean making country to oscillate among several In pre-Structural Adjustment Programme era, country experimented with not less than 18 poverty reduction Ogwumike (2002), citing Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN 1998) observed that these programmes could not be sustained due to lack of political will and commitment, policy instability and insufficient involvement of beneficiaries of programmes. Between 1986, when Structural Adjustment Programme came afloat and 2012, not less than seven new poverty reduction programmes have been mainstreamed in Nigeria. Out of these, four can be said to have entrepreneurial flavour. It can therefore be said that entrepreneurship approach to poverty reduction in Nigeria is a latter - day development. In sharp contrast to failure of other global attempts at poverty reduction, there is now a plethora of studies orchestrating entrepreneurship as a viable route to poverty reduction.Statement of ProblemThe position that entrepreneurship is a bulwark against poor economic growth, poverty, frustration and social exclusion appears to be getting widely accepted in most countries across world. This has resulted in a massive change towards entrepreneurship and a movement by Third World countries from public sector dominated economies to entrepreneurial economies. Nigeria is a quintessential indicator of this (Magbagbeola, 1996; Chemonics International Inc., 2006).It is paradoxical however that contrary to position that entrepreneurship is a panacea for poverty, there is an increasing number of the working poor', being dominated by entrepreneurs and self -employed. For such people, unpalatable consequences of poverty still abate. Thus many micro and small business entrepreneurs still experience malnutrition, engage in child labour, lack access to good health care system and hence suffer sicknesses. Other consequences of poverty which manifest also among the working poor' include voicelessness, inter-generational transmission of poverty status, and restricted access to good education.The existence of the working poor' in an environment of massive micro and small business entrepreneurship may be suggestive of poor impact of entrepreneurship on poverty reduction. …