For many years, rural–urban migration was viewed favourably in economic development as a result of industrialization. Internal migration was thought to be a natural process in which surplus labour was gradually withdrawn from the rural sector to provide needed manpower for the urban industrial growth process. However, today migration has become a major factor contributing to the excess labour force in the urban centres, which has continued to increase the rate of unemployment and other social challenges caused by the imbalances between rural–urban environments (Kalu et al. 2014). The trend in Nigeria’s oil economy is characterized by rural exodus, Nigeria’s rural oriented economy with the vast majority of the population expanding their labour force in agricultural pursuits is nonetheless characterized with migration economy based on the long history of Nigerian urbanization (Abbass 2012).