Poverty Mapping: A case study of Guma Local Government Area of Benue State
Ortserga Saakuma
Department of Urban and Regional planning
Federal University of Technology Minna, Niger State
Email: jsortserga3@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
All efforts by previous administrations aim at reducing poverty in Nigeria and Benue State in particular have always failed to bring out the desired result. This has been traditionally blamed on lack of a well constructed poverty profile that provides information with complete geographic data coverage. This paper investigated poverty in Guma Local Government Area of Benue State with the aim of identifying the basic needs of the people in the Area. Seventeen settlement sub-units of varying sizes were chosen for the study; the study used income, basic amenities and road infrastructure development to measure and analyzes poverty in the LGA. The descriptive method of analysis was used with Geographical Information System (GIS) to conduct the study. The result of the analysis showed a high level of poverty in the LGA with Majority of the people living on less than the equivalent of one US dollar per day. The result also showed that majority of the people in the study area lack basic amenities of life like water, electricity, health centers and good roads. Finally the basic needs of each settlement sub-unit were ranked according to importance. The study concluded that, for poverty to be reduced, attention must be focus on analyzing, measuring and reducing poverty at settlement sub-units.
Keywords: Poverty Mapping, Settlement Sub-Unit, Poverty Reduction, income, basic amenities, road infrastructure and Basic Needs.
