PUBLIC FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN AKWA IBOM STATE BETWEEN 2008 AND 2017

This study sets to address the problem of rural under-development in Akwa Ibom State. Themain objective of the study is to undertake a study of Public Financial Management and RuralDevelopment in Akwa Ibom State between 2008 and 2017. The study adopted the theory ofDistributive Justice propounded by John Rawls in 1971. The population of Akwa Ibom Stateplaced at 3,920,208 and drawn from the National Population Commission (NPC, 2006) census wasused to determine the sample size of 200 through the use of Taro Yamane’s formula. In all andwith a well structured questionnaire as the major instrument of data collection in this study, thefinal response rate of 182 was determined after sorting out damaged questionnaire forms fromrespondents. The study made use of Historical/Descriptive Survey Design and ProportionalStratified Random Sampling Method to gather data from respondents. The data collected werepresented in simple percentage tables and analyzed using chi-square Statistical Tools. Three Null(Ho) and Alternate (Hi) hypotheses, respectively were formulated. These, among others include:Single stream of revenue or mono-economy had likely not impacted, to a large extent, on ruraldevelopment in Akwa Ibom State between 2008 and 2017. Conversely, single stream of revenue ormono-economy had likely impacted, to a large extent, on rural development in Akwa Ibom Statebetween 2008 and 2017. Three major research questions were asked in order to elicit answers fromrespondents that helped in the testing of the hypotheses. One of those three questions was, “hadsingle stream of revenue or mono-economy likely impacted, to a large extent, on rural developmentin Akwa Ibom State between 2008 and 2017? Three findings were also made and based on thosefindings, three recommendations were given. Among the other findings was, that single stream ofrevenue or mono-economy had not impacted, to a large extent, on rural development in Akwa IbomState between 2008 and 2017. Finally, one of the recommendations made was that, “the stategovernment should create other sources of revenue, apart from oil or federation account.