Criteria for citing poverty alleviating facilities in target communities in nigeria: a case study of yobe state

The Federal Government of Nigeria have created programmes to alleviate poverty, but indices on electricity, water, education, housing and health have shown that little have been done in the country’s effort to develop rural areas. Most of the development projects were not evenly distributed and as such very few groups of people benefited from such projects. One of the most critical decisions of poverty alleviation programme is the identification of the intended beneficiaries of the programmes. That is the poor. It is often argued that the best solution to the problem of poverty alleviation isthe one which identified the characteristics of the target communities and then direct benefits towards the community. This study was therefore conducted to evolve some criteria for siting poverty alleviating facilities for target communities in Yobe state. Primary data for this study were collected from sample of 405 farmers in Yobe state through administration of structured questionnaires. The community variables which constituted the secondary data were collected from various Ministries in the state, Local Government secretaries and the State ADP. To show the association between the individual and community variables and their spatial variation in the study area, Principal Component Analysis was employed. Using principal component analysis, the individual and community variables were transformed into a linear equation by allocating relative weights to each variable. These weights (coefficients of the equation), which are reasonable unique to each variable measured the relative importance of the variables and therefore facilitated their ranking in each of the ten wards. Household attributes like income, housing, sanitation and farm holdings are highly correlated with community variables. Community variables have positive impact on the quality of rural life. The results provide ample evidence on how community facilities translate into individual poverty alleviation criteria. When wards were ranked in terms of their access to central facilities, the arrangement in ascending was: Wadi, Kayeri, Fusami, Koriyel, Wagir, TuloTulo, Kukuri, Karasuwa, Dawayo and Masaba. It is recommended that a ward with least access to central facilities should be the first target siting poverty alleviating facilities in the study area.