ABSTRACT
The worrisome level of poverty and understanding how to reduce it has
been the major thrust of all development plans in all economies. The
poverty incidence was 31.1% in Enugu State in 2004. Information is
power and development communication is a veritable tool for fighting
poverty. Information and communication must be strategic enough to
achieve this. It must be integrated and institutionalised in the PRSP
process. This involves the active solicitation of stakeholders’ perspective
to help consider options to shape the formulation of policy, ensuring that
the mechanisms are in place for a two-way flow of information and to
build consensus among stakeholders about development. This work
examined the place of information as a strategy for fighting poverty in
the context of various strategies employed by National Poverty
Eradication Programme (NAPEP) and Enugu State Ministry for Human
Development and Poverty Reduction (MOHD&PR. It addressed the
information and communication issues in poverty reduction from the
perspective of the newly and very practicable model, Synergistic
Communication for Development (SCD), developed by Prof. Ikechukwu
Nwosu.
Our findings during our interactive sessions with the officials of
the two agencies show little or no involvement of communication
experts in their project formulation stage. Active participation and cooperation
that promotes synergy amongst the various stakeholders in a
project life cycle were not maintained. Our empirical estimation reveals
that: National Poverty Eradication Programme, (NAPEP), uses
information but not as a strategy for fighting poverty. The Ministry for
Human Development and Poverty Reduction, Enugu State uses less
information than NAPEP. As expected the work corroborated other
authorities that information is a veritable tool for fighting poverty and
that unequal access to information could make some people more well
off than others. It concludes by recommending amongst others that
information and communication should be strategic enough for fighting
poverty and not as a mere awareness creation and educating process.
The process must involve information and communication experts and
all other stakeholders in the formulation, implementation, monitoring
and evaluation stages of the poverty eradication programme.
