Rural development practice in Nigeria has spanned over 10 decades from pre-independence
to the current decade. This paper attempts a time-series review on rural development practice
in Nigeria to see what has changed over a fairly long period of time. Various development
plan periods have been examined in relation to rural development practice. The review shows
that the greater part of public efforts on rural development was subsumed under agricultural
development which was more exploitative to the rural resources and residents than improve
their quality of life. Although relatively improved understanding of rural development
manifested among policy makers beginning in the late 1980s, the paper argues that such
understanding surprisingly did not translate into corresponding improvement in rural
development practice because of several factors including weak institutional arrangements,
corruption and absence of coordinated practice among competing agencies. A number of
recommendations have been highlighted.