Abstract:
The study examined the World Bank loan conditionalities and the politics of poverty reduction in Africa, with emphasis on Nigeria. Several decades of grappling with World Bank loan conditionalities and poverty reduction strategies have, at best, yielded meager returns as poverty and underdevelopment persist. Thus, the study investigated the implementation of World Bank loan conditionalities and their impact on social welfare in Nigeria. The study predicated its investigations on the method of analysis derived from Marxian political economy (dialectical materialism); while method of data collection was qualitative in nature. Data collected were analyzed using qualitative descriptive analysis. The study noted, among others, that there have been politicization, inconsistencies, contradictions and failures in the implementation of World Bank loan conditionalities. The study sees the existence of class, poverty and inequality in spite of mounted programmes and strategies for poverty reduction in Nigeria, to be intrinsic in the character of political leaders that inherited the state apparatuses at independence. The study argues that poverty reduction mantra is a façade as the Nigeria state institutionalized poverty and inequality. The study recommended that the neo-colonial capitalist economic system should be jettisoned by our leaders as it institutionalizes the existence of class which glorifies the widening gap between the rich and the poor; and equally suggests that Nigeria should utilize her local resources for production to take care of her citizens who wallop in abject poverty.
