GASPRO International Journal of Eminent Scholars

ABSTRACT
The study aimed at finding out the economic impact of COVID-19 on rural dwellers; a case study of economists, rural farmers, traders, and transporters in Nigeria. The research design used for the study was an Expost-Facto. A sample of 35 respondents was selected using the stratified systematic sampling technique and interviewed over the phone through contacts made available by the Chairmen of various SMEs in Nigeria. A structured questionnaire tagged; “COVID 19 PANDEMIC ECONOMIC IMPACT AND RURAL DWELLERS QUESTIONNAIRE (CPEIRDQ). The research instrument was subject to face and content validation by experts in the field. The instrument was also tested for validity and reliability at 0.05 level of significance. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse the research question while simple regression analysis was used to analyse the research hypotheses. The result revealed that there is significant economic impact of covid-19 pandemic on rural dwellers in Nigeria. It also reveals that Covid-19 poses significant threat on health of rural dwellers. On this premise, one of the recommendations was that government, non-governmental and private individuals should invest in rural agricultural programmes, help people become more self-reliant, mitigate the impact of severe events, increase rural prosperity, ensure more sustainable food systems and food security, and create greater resilience in fragile areas of the state.
KEYWORDS: Covid-19, economy, agriculture, threats, human health, rural, food insecurity, unemployment, chronic infection,