Abstract

Foreign aid is a concept that has taken centre stage since the past decades in world affairs. This is because of underdevelopments that have plagued the developing countries of the world. This is even worse in Nigeria where plethora of factors combine to impoverish the citizenry. Arguments have also trailed the issue of foreign aids in the affairs of the developing nations whether or it serves a useful purpose in poverty reduction/eradication in the developing nations. However, it is envisaged that such facility as foreign aid should be utilized by the developing countries to improve upon their nation. This paper, therefore, discusses the impact of foreign aid on poverty reduction, and or eradication programmes in Lagos State, Nigeria. It further undertakes the conceptual framework of foreign aid and poverty and poverty reduction/alleviation. It examines some literature on foreign aids and poverty; the nature of foreign aid and its strategy for poverty reduction in Lagos State. Similarly, how foreign aid has impacted poverty eradication/ reduction programmes in Lagos State shall be analysed. The methodology for the study is exploratory that made use of both primary and secondary sources of data collection. The primary sources, data was collected from interview and government document; while the secondary data were collected from textbooks, library search, scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles, internet etc. the data were analysed through the content analysis. It is noted that there are serious challenges that serves as constraints to the effective use of foreign aid on poverty alleviation programmes such as corrupt politicians’ misappropriation of funds, inadequate facilities as against the number of beneficiaries of the programme, among others. Some of the recommendations include that the government should strengthen the institutional framework to ensure adequate monitoring and deployment of training centres to accommodate more people who are willing, to effectively monitor the sessions, among others.