Abstract: Poverty is a challenge to development. Its presence anywhere is a threat to development everywhere. It manifests in household lack and denial, unemployment, illiteracy, water and sanitation crises, inadequate medical services, poor child welfare and health and gender issues. There is the need for Community Corporate Involvement (CCI) to enhance response to poverty and development challenges afflicting the host community. Peripheral CCI practices border on unsustainable donations or philanthropy and are mere poverty panaceas that need to be de-emphasized for those that address sustainable community development and truly reduce poverty. Using the critical research method of analyzing available secondary data and information, this study examined the crippling poverty situation existing side-by-side with Corporate Social Actions (CSAs) of oil and gas corporations in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The findings show that poverty indicators are worse in South-South zone of Nigeria (the heart of the Niger Delta region), where petroleum oil corporations claim to embark on CSAs, than in other geo-political zones of the country, where there is no oil exploration. This points to peripheral CSAs that do not reduce poverty, hence the attendant restiveness in the Niger Delta region. The study recommends, among others, concentrating efforts on CSAs that address sustainable community development, sustainable livelihood and poverty reduction.