Assessment of Urban Poverty and Service Provision in Ekiti State , Nigeria

Our Earth is becoming increasingly urbanized and the provision of urban service delivery cannot meet the urgent needs of these rapidly growing new population. The consequence of this has led to urbanization of poverty, hence, the study assessed urban service delivery and the priority needs of urban poor. The data used for the study were collected through the administration of 850 copies of a well structured questionnaire. The Stratified Random Sampling technique was used in the analyses. ANOVA statistical method was used to test the set hypothesis and it was revealed that there were significant variations in service delivery and the priority needs of the people. For example, the following service delivery were termed significant at 100%, 100%,95%, 98.5% and 100% levels for education, water supplies, roads provision, electricity supplies and health facilities respectively. The study concludes that the provision of necessary social infrastructure in the State should increase to meet with the high level of urbanization and that the provision should be based on Community Driven Development approach since those who care most about reducing poverty are the poor people themselves.