This work examined the spatial inequality of development in the twenty one Local Government Areas of Anambra State. To determine the extent of the inequality in state’s development service, Gini co-efficient procedures, factor analysis and cluster analysis procedures were employed. The data used were collected on 17 variables indexing various aspects of development for the 21 Local Government Areas. From the Gini co-efficient analysis, using the 17 original development indicator variables, the result shows that there are inequality in health, M.D.G water, and transportation variables. With the composite standard deviate, several patterns of inequality were revealed. Development is found to be continuous in scale among the areas, and the areas can be categorized into different groups; but on the basis of the technique of analysis adopted, a structure of privileged and under privileged areas were revealed. Eleven out of the 21 Local Government Areas were privileged while 10 areas were deprived. Six variables with eigen-value greater than unity were extracted from the factor analysis. Six variables explained about 78.16 percent of the variation in the original variables. It shows that 4 Local Government Areas have a comprehensive development while many other areas are deprived in terms of development. Conceptually, development is seen in terms of social and economic opportunities available to a community for its welfare and progress. The principles of equity and social justice therefore form the bases of determining the relative privilege or under-privilege of a unit area in the overall development of the study area. From the cluster analysis result, it shows that while the privilege group exhibits random pattern, the underprivilege group has some tendency towards clustering.
Keywords: Community, Development, Nigeria, Social Justice, Spatial Inequality
