Public Financial Management and Rural Development in Akwa Ibom State, 2008 - 2017

This study was set to address the slow face of rural development in Akwa Ibom State. The main objective of the study was to undertake a study of Public Financial Management and Rural Development in Akwa Ibom State, 2008 – 2017. The study adopted the theory of Distributive Justice propounded by John Rawls in 1971. The population of Akwa Ibom State placed at 3,920,208 and drawn from the National Population Commission (NPC, 2006) census was used to determine the sample size of 200 through the use of Taro Yamane’s formula. In all and with a well structured questionnaire as the major instrument of data collection in this study, the final response rate of 182 was determined after sorting out damaged questionnaire forms from the 200. The study made use of primary and secondary sources of data collection and adopted the Historical/Descriptive Survey Design and Proportional Stratified Random Sampling Method to gather data from respondents. The data collected were presented in simple percentage tables and analyzed using Chi-square Statistical Tools. Three Null (Ho) Hypotheses were tested out of five formulated. These, among others included: Single stream of revenue or mono-economy had likely not impacted, to a large extent, on rural development in Akwa Ibom State between 2008 and 2017. Three research questions were also asked in line with the hypotheses. One of those three questions was, “had single stream of revenue or mono-economy likely impacted, to a large extent, on rural development in Akwa Ibom State between 2008 and 2017? Based on those questions, three findings were made. As a result of the finding made three recommendations were given. One of the other findings was, that single stream of revenue or mono-economy had not impacted, to a large extent, on rural development in Akwa Ibom State between 2008 and 2017. It was therefore recommended, among others, that “the state government should create other sources of revenue, apart from oil or federation account revenues.