Abstract

Nigerian leaders have severally appreciated the fact that pervasiveness of poverty is one of the major impediments to development. This ostensibly could be one of the reasons that led to the adoption of many poverty reduction policies and frameworks especially since 1999. This paper critically looks at democracy and poverty incidence in Nigeria. It argues that democracy has aggravated the poverty profile in Nigeria. This is as a result of erroneous perception, domestic perforation and redesign of the concept and practice of democracy to suit the elitist rule. All these have contributed to the rising cases of conflicts, crimes, instability and inadvertently to poverty crisis. The study adopted content analysis as a means of data gathering and analysis while relying on good governance model as its theoretical guide. It concludes that inherent contradictions in Nigerian democracy have continued to democratize poverty incidence in Nigeria. The paper recommended that there is need to strengthen democratic institutions to ensure good governance that would provide basic human needs to reduce if not totally eradicate the rising cases of poverty in Nigeria.     

Key words: Democracy, institutionalization, poverty, Nigeria.