Affluence and Underdevelopment: the Nigerian Experience

Richard A. Joseph

doi:10.1017/S0022278X00021698

Affluence and Underdevelopment: the Nigerian Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008

Richard A. Joseph

Article contents

Extract
References

Get access

Rights & Permissions

Extract

There is a well-known story that is regularly acted out in many countries of the world. An individual suddenly wins a large fortune – from a lottery or horse race – and is catapulted from rags to riches. After a few years of dissipation, the money has been squandered, the physical and mental health of the nouveau riche broken, and the glorious future of unlimited possibilities constricted into a bleak vista of regret and recrimination. At the moment of exhilaration, what the person concerned – understandably enough – failed to recognise was that the danger such sudden wealth represented was no less great than the dazzling promise.

Type: Articles
Information: The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , June 1978 , pp. 221 - 239

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022278X00021698 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

^{page 221 note 1} Oyejide, T. A., ‘The Strategy of Industrial Development in Nigeria’, in The Quarterly Journal of Administration (Ife), VIII, 2, 1974, pp. 167–76;Google ScholarOni, S. A., ‘Industry including Indigenisation’, in Olayide, S. O. (ed.), Economic Survey of Nigeria (Ibadan, 1976), pp. 53–70;Google ScholarHelleiner, Gerald K., Peasant Agriculture, Government and Economic Growth in Nigeria (Illinois, 1966), pp. 26 and 319–20;Google Scholar and Kilby, Peter, Industrialization in an Open Economy: Nigeria, 1945–1966 (Cambridge, 1969), passim.Google Scholar

^{page 221 note 2} Oni, loc. cit. p. 80; and Schätzl, Ludwig, Petroleum in Nigeria (Oxford, 1969), passim.Google Scholar

^{page 222 note 1} Details about external transactions, as well as the balance-of-payments deficit of 1976, are available in many government publications as well as the daily press. See The Daily Times (Lagos), 22 September 1976 and 26 March 1977, and The Business Times (Lagos), 5 April 1977.

^{page 223 note 1} Helleiner, op. cit. pp. 32 and 40.

^{page 223 note 2} Second National Development Plan, 1970–74 (Lagos, 1970), p. 24.Google Scholar

^{page 223 note 3} For a general survey of the pivotal rÔle of this social group, see Williams, Gavin, ‘Nigeria: a political economy’, in his Nigeria: economy and society (London, 1976), pp. 11–54.Google Scholar

^{page 224 note 1} Second National Development Plan, p. 28.

^{page 224 note 2} The Business Times, 21 June 1977.

^{page 224 note 3} Brett, E. A., Colonialism and Underdevelopment in East Africa: the politics of economic change, 1919–1939 (London, 1973), p. 276.Google Scholar

^{page 224 note 4} Third National Development Plan, 1975–80 (Lagos, 1975), Vol. I, p. 147. Manufacturing accounted for 5-64 per cent of G.D.P. in 1960 and 8 per cent in 1975.

^{page 224 note 5} The basic research in this area has been undertaken by Phillips, Adedotun O. and the findings published in the Nigerian Journal of Social and Economic Studies (Ibadan) during 1967, 1968, and 1969,Google Scholar as well as in ‘Administering Nigeria's Pioneer Companies Relief’, in The Quarterly Journal of Administration, IV, 1, October 1969, pp. 11–29, and ‘Reforming Nigeria's Tax Incentives System’, in ibid. V, 4, July 1971, pp. 421–37. These articles and other relevant studies are now available in Teriba, O. and Kayode, M. O. (eds.), Industrial Development in Nigeria: patterns, problems and prospects (Ibadan, 1977).Google Scholar

^{page 225 note 1} See the report of a speech by Professor Ezekwe, G. O. of the Projects Development Agency, Enugu, in The Daily Times, 8 03 1977.Google Scholar

^{page 225 note 2} Third National Development Plan, p. 147.

^{page 225 note 3} Ibid.

^{page 225 note 4} Central Bank of Nigeria, Annual Report, 1975 (Lagos, 1976), p. 22.Google Scholar

^{page 225 note 5} The Sunday Times (Lagos), 24 April, 1977.

^{page 225 note 6} Akeredolu-Ale, E. O., ‘Some Thoughts on the Indigenization Process and the Quality of Nigerian Capitalism’, in Nigeria's Indigenisation Policy. Proceedings of the Nigerian Economic Society Symposium, 1974 (Ibadan, 1975), p. 72.Google Scholar

^{page 226 note 1} The Business Times, 21 June 1977.

^{page 226 note 2} Kilby, op. cit.

^{page 226 note 3} A short bibliography of the relevant studies is given by Akeredolu-Ale, E. O., The Underdevelopment of Indigenous Entrepreneurship in Nigeria (Ibadan, 1975), p. 28n.Google Scholar

^{page 227 note 1} See, respectively, The New Nigerian (Lagos), 22 January 1977, p. 5; Akeredolu-Ale, op. cit. p. 101; The Business Times, 17 May 1977, p. 12 and Teriba, O., ‘Financing Indigenization’, in The Quarterly Journal of Administration, IX, 2, 1975, p. 166.Google Scholar

^{page 227 note 2} Akeredolu-Ale, op. cit. p. 101.

^{page 227 note 3} Ibid. pp. 31–2; and Kilby, op. cit pp. 336 and 341. For a trenchant critique of Kilby's disregard of the political factors responsible for the delay in Nigeria's industrialisation, see Akeredolu-Ale, E. O., ‘The Competitive Threshold Hypothesis and Nigeria's Industrialization Process – a Review Article’, in Nigerian Journal of Social and Economic Studies, XIV, 1, 03 1972, pp. 109–20.Google Scholar

^{page 227 note 4} Akeredolu-Ale, ‘Some Thoughts on the Indigenization Process’, loc. cit. pp. 71 and 75.

^{page 228 note 1} The Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decree, 23 February 1972 and 12 January 1977. Analyses are available in Nigeria's Indigenisation Policy; Teriba, loc. cit. and Collins, Paul, ‘The Political Economy of Indigenization: the case of the Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decree’, in The African Review (Dar es Salaam), IV, 4, 1974, pp. 491–508.Google Scholar The provisions of the 1977 Decree were published in most Nigerian newspapees during January 1977. For a general survey, see Rood, Leslie L., ‘Nationalisation and Indigenisation in Africa’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), XIV, 3, 09 1976, pp. 427–47.Google Scholar

^{page 228 note 2} Teriba, loc. cit. pp. 162–3.

^{page 228 note 3} Onoge, Omafume F., ‘The Indigenisation Decree and Economic Independence: another ease of bourgeois utopianism’, in Nigeria's Indigenisation Policy, p. 59.Google Scholar

^{page 229 note 1} Nduomu, A. M., ‘Foreign Private Investment in the Manufacturing Sector in the Nigerian Economy, 1966–70’, in Central Bank of Nigeria, Economic and Financial Review (Lagos), XII, 1, 06 1974, pp. 22–3.Google Scholar

^{page 229 note 2} Asabia, S. O., ‘Share Valuation: the Nigerian experience’, in Nigeria's Indigenisation Policy, p. 29.Google Scholar

^{page 229 note 3} The only real struggle being that of obtaining application forms from the banks using personal contacts and prestige.

^{page 230 note 1} Resort was made to the use of fictitious names or those of dependents to maximise share allocation. In the current exercise a limit has been placed on the number of shares per applicant and a reservation of so per cent to employees in each company. It is left to be seen how effective these devices are in limiting present or future inequality of access to share ownership.

^{page 230 note 2} A point emphasised by the World Bank and taken up by Nigerian commentators; Nigeria: options for long-term development (Baltimore and London, 1974), p. 100.

^{page 230 note 3} Teriba, loc. cit. p. 173.

^{page 231 note 1} Second National Development Plan, p. 62.

^{page 231 note 2} Ibid.

^{page 231 note 3} The Daily Times, April 1977, p. 3. The naira was valued in August 1977 at U.S. $1.54 and £0.86 sterling.

^{page 231 note 4} The Business Times, 9 November 1976.

^{page 231 note 5} Nigeria, p. 8.

^{page 231 note 6} Third National Development Plan, pp. 65–7.

^{page 232 note 1} The Daily Times, 5 April 1977, and The Business Times, 22 February 1977.

^{page 232 note 2} The Daily Sketch (Ibadan), 11 April 1977, and The Daily Times, 19 May 1977.

^{page 233 note 1} Third National Development Plan, p. 34.

^{page 233 note 2} See the interview with a senior government official in The Business Times, July 1977.

^{page 234 note 1} Ibid. 12 April 1977.

^{page 234 note 2} Price increases in the staple foods of yam, cassava products, etcetera, are regularly reported in the daily press. During 1974–5, when increases in the price index for middle incomes in Lagos jumped from an annual rate of 16·7 per cent to 29·6 per cent, that of the lower income group rose from 13·4 per cent to 33·9 per cent. Central Bank of Nigeria, Annual Report, 1975, p. 13.Google Scholar

^{page 235 note 1} The Business Times, 29 March 1977.

^{page 235 note 2} The Daily Times, 26 March 1977.

^{page 235 note 3} Reference here is to the guideline of a 1 to 7 per cent increase for this group in the 1977–8 budget. A study of food consumption patterns in the major southern cities is likely to show a shift in the diet of low-wage earners from the locally-produced, but increasingly costly yam and gari, to include more bread and even imported rice.

^{page 235 note 4} The Business Times, 29 March 1977.

^{page 236 note 1} Third National Development Plan, p. 48.

^{page 236 note 2} Ibid. p. 47.

^{page 236 note 3} The Daily Times, 12 April 1977. The Plan has since been revised upwards to ₦42 billion.

^{page 236 note 4} The Business Times, 22 February 1977.

^{page 237 note 1} See Oyediran, O. and Ajibola, W. A., ‘Nigerian Public Service in 1975’, in Survey of Nigerian Affairs, 1975 (London, 1978).Google Scholar

^{page 237 note 2} Wage and salary increases in Nigeria do not gradually work their way through the economy. Instead, for example, market women will often greet the mere announcement of such awards by raising the price of their goods.

^{page 237 note 3} Public Service Review Commission, Report on Grading and Pay, 1972–74, Vol. 1 (Lagos 1974), p. 16.Google Scholar

^{page 238 note 1} The Daily Times, 26 March 1977, and The Business Times, 8 March 1977.

^{page 239 note 1} See West Africa (London), 15 May 1978, pp. 948–9.

^{page 239 note 2} The Business Times, 29 March 1977.

Article contents

Affluence and Underdevelopment: the Nigerian Experience

Extract

Access options

References

Save article to Kindle

Save article to Dropbox

Save article to Google Drive

Reply to: Submit a response

Your details

You have entered the maximum number of contributors

Conflicting interests