Development means different things to different people, while some say development is the ability of man to conquer his environment, others defined development as a process of growing bigger or larger.
Whatever be the case, development must contain an element of change and that change must be positive or better. Therefore we can simply define development as the act of changing the status of a people socially, economically and even politically for the better, within a given environment.
In Nigeria the bulk of the people live in the rural areas, therefore any plan on development to make meaning, it has to emphasize on the rural dwellers. But what we see in Nigeria is that our government plans are in most cases concentrated in the urban centres. This to a large extent negates the concept of development and no wonder our developmental plans have not achieved the desired results.
The earlier our leaders begin to understand that development cannot be achieved without the people, the better for all of us.
Development therefore should be people oriented for it to make meaning and the majority of our people live in the rural areas, it is only wise that emphasis should be laid on the transformation of the rural areas. If for nothing else, to check rural-urban drift which has been one of our major challenges in achieving national development in the country.
There have been various theories of development globally. Theory by the way could be defined as a set of ideas or principles that attempt to explain something.
Because of the importance of development to any given nation, theories of development seem to be endless.
Development no doubt must contain an element of positive changes, which should reflect on the people concern.
Development just as technology to endure or be sustained, it has to evolve locally. For instance, Nigeria has been battling with fuel scarcity for a long time, occasioned by our inability to refine crude oil produced abundantly in the country and still we have four giant imported refineries. What this simply means is that because the existing gigantic refineries were built by expatriates with imported equipments, we cannot maintain them. Therefore it would have made more sense if Nigeria has built ten small refineries with local technology and by Nigerians which could be serviced or maintained locally. Therefore a school of thought has it that development must be home-grown and locally driven for it to be sustained, located overseas and no wonder the huge amount that has been expended in attempt to locate development abroad and possibly plead with it to come to Nigeria.
