ial Scien oc ce S s d J n o u a r s n t a r l A Arts and Social Sciences Journal Anthony O, et al., Arts Social Sci J 2014, 5:2 DOI: 10.4172/2151-6200.1000067 ISSN: 2151-6200 Review Article Open Access Governance and Enthronement of Poverty in Nigeria Anthony Onyishi1 and Christian Ezeibe2* 1Department of Public Administration and Local Government, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria 2Department of Political Science, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria *Corresponding author: Christian Ezeibe, Department of Political Science, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria, Tel: +2348037741813; E-mail:
[email protected] Received date: December 19, 2013, Accepted date: April 29, 2014, Published date: May 6, 2014 Copyright: © 2014 Ezeibe, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Abstract At the primary stage of human development, man struggled against his fellow man in his quest to achieve the essential needs of food, clothing and shelter. But the gradual and steady progress toward communal living was attended by the syndrome of collectivism. From this stage man evolved to nation-state status with the emergence of modern governmental system as one of its towering features. Henceforth, the socio-economic and political fortunes of nation-states have come to bear a direct relationship to the integrity of their governance systems. This paper takes a hard look at public governance in Nigeria. Relying on historical and contemporary data, we found that the enthronement of instrumentalist Nigerian state principally accounts for not only the quantum but also the structure of poverty in Nigeria.