In The Struggles of Post-Independence Nigeria, Ucheoma Nwagbara argues that despite Nigeria’s oil wealth and arable agricultural land, Nigerians are not any better today than they were before independence. Nwagbara examines Nigeria’s struggles with corruption, reckless government spending, poverty, inequality, crime, and violent insurgency to show how successive Nigerian leadership has failed to utilize the country’s enormous natural and human resources to improve citizens’ lives, eradicate poverty, and deliver broadly shared prosperity, especially to the middle class and the poor. Through his analysis, Nwagbara demonstrates that the nationalist ideals of dedicated and accountable leadership behind the struggle for independence in Nigeria have been betrayed as the emergent post-colonial leadership cared only for personal survival and gain. Despite these failures, Nwagbara reveals that Nigeria may still have a chance to improve and recover if Nigerians unite and demand real change through political and social activism.
Nigeria is Africa's most populous country and the world's eighth largest oil producer, but its success has been undermined in recent decades by ethnic and religious conflict, political instability, rampant official corruption and an ailing economy. Toyin Falola, a leading historian intimately acquainted with the region, and Matthew Heaton, who has worked extensively on African science and culture, combine their expertise to explain the context to Nigeria's recent troubles through an exploration of its pre-colonial and colonial past, and its journey from independence to statehood. By examining key themes such as colonialism, religion, slavery, nationalism and the economy, the authors show how Nigeria's history has been swayed by the vicissitudes of the world around it, and how Nigerians have adapted to meet these challenges. This book offers a unique portrayal of a resilient people living in a country with immense, but unrealized, potential.
The quest for Nigeria to be an industrialized economy with high sustainable growth rates has been the preoccupation of every administration that has piloted the affairs of the nation since after independence. But amidst of these struggles for sustainable growth the Nigerian economy has performed poorly since the late 1970s, resulting in stagnation and increasing poverty levels. Industrialisation was seen as the only feasible means to get to the Promised Land by breaking the shackles of poverty because of the expected spill over effect in every other aspect of the economy. Despite all efforts, since October 1960, the level of industrialization remains very low even with the oil boom that comes intermittently. Thus all three factors (time preference, portfolio choice, and expectations) interacted to produce an economically irrational reaction to the oil-boom in Nigeria. The structural adjustment (SAP) era was seen as a perfect time to consolidate the industrial aspirations but the Nigerian experience with SAP policies in the area of trade and industrial policies illustrates the interplay of several factors in the determination of policy design and implementation. In one sense, there is the loss of policy autonomy since the IMF and donors could almost retain a veto power on policy choices. In practice, Nigerian policy-makers have had tremendous room to manoeuvre. The situation have been off and on till the 4th republic (1999-2007) yet Nigeria's manufacturing sub sector contribution to GDP instead of growing dropped to less than 3 percent in 2006. The paper reviewed all the policies and incentives and proffer guidelines for the way forward.
Nigeria, despite being the African country of greatest strategic importance to the U.S., remains poorly understood. John Campbell explains why Nigeria is so important to understand in a world of jihadi extremism, corruption, oil conflict, and communal violence. The revised edition provides updates through the recent presidential election.
"Crippled Giant is an excellent summary of Nigerian political history....The work is notable for even-handed analysis of both history and theory. The resultis an introduction of the highest quality to the study of Nigerian politics." --African Studies Review "Osaghae, an academic with a refreshinglyneutral and understated approach to the maddening follies of his government, hasproduced a highly readable overview of Nigeria's politics, economy, and foreignrelations. Rich in detail, his account is also a useful tour of earlier thematictreatments of the subject." -- Foreign Affairs ..".well-written, coherent narrative and thoughtful, balanced analysis of Nigeria'spolitical history from 1960 to 1996."? -- A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, St. Antony'sCollege, Oxford Eghosa Osaghae's study leads him to the conclusionthat Nigeria's problems are not of recent making but can be traced to structuralimpediments from colonial times.
This book is an excellent writing comprising the reasons and causes of underdevelopment in Nigeria; and at the time, preferring solutions. Gives a broad overview of leadership styles in different parts of the world, and how we can learn from them. This book provides for the reader: An excellent perspective on the early historical origins and political development of Nigeria. Solutions to the leadership question Nigeria has been struggling with since independence. It destroys the myth that leadership is Nigeria's only problem. It points out the role of responsible followership in building a great nation. It shows why democracy has not worked in Africa and what needs to be done for it to work. It points out reasons why strong men (messiahs) cannot solve the problem of Nigeria and African nations. It makes a case for building strong institutions and systems as the key to eradicating corruption and leadership failure. It posits that wrong values are at the root of our national problems and challenges both for leaders and followers to imbibe good values. It enjoins citizens not to abdicate the responsibility of their country to the leaders alone, but must themselves accept the responsibility for their nation. It also shows examples of proactive Nigerians that are taking responsibility to build a better Nigeria.
This book draws attention to the need to improve governance in Nigeria so that the country will not be a failed state. That the country is not doing well in governance is documented in Chapter 1 of the book by reference to 2020 Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG). What has emerged from IIAG is that governance in our country has not only deteriorated in the last ten years but has been worse in the past five years. Within the West African region, IIAG rated us the worst in security and peace, second to the last in accessibility to health, third to the last in business environment and overall governance. The book documents some of the post-independence issues that have created problems in Nigeria from the perspective of public financial management. The book is of the view that the prerequisite for solving Nigerian problems irrespective of any professional angle is solving the problems in our political system which in turn cannot be solved without addressing the challenges of the 1999 Constitution. The book of six chapters shows in Chapter 1 how the country has lagged behind its West African neighbors in some specific areas of governance. The chapter believes that part of the reasons why Nigeria is not functioning well is the existence of extractive political and economic institutions, which ensure that our refineries are not working so that petrol can be imported to their advantage. The chapter calls for more involvement of our youths in governance because the average age of Nigerian Ministers was about 60 years at the time of their inauguration in 2019 while that of British Ministers was less than 48 years. Chapter 2 reveals some political developments that have affected the destiny of the country since independence. They include a 30-month civil war and 29 years of military rule. During this period of 60 years, the leaders from Northern Nigeria headed the Federal Government for a total of 43 years and 3 months. This is the primary reason for the agitation for the country's Presidency to rotate between the North and the South of the country. Chapter 3 looks at some aspects of the 1999 Constitution for the purpose of drawing attention to how they have caused problems in our march to greatness. Chapter 4 documents how military rule undermined public accountability in the country. Chapter 5 is a review of some specific instances of what went wrong with public financial management in Nigeria since independence. The issues discussed in the two chapters on public financial management are opposite of what good governance is all about which include transparency, accountability, effectiveness, efficiency, equity and minimization of corruption. This is why we should all be interested in producing political leadership that will not hide material financial facts from the public. If this is not done, public reporting will be infrequent, unreliable and less comprehensive. This will pave way for leadership that is unwilling to submit themselves to public scrutiny. The more successful the leadership can be in resisting public scrutiny, the more likely that the roles of Accountants and Auditors as guardians of public purse will be rendered nugatory since the leadership will have no incentive to take corrective actions to safeguard public funds.This is where the problem lies because without proper accounting, there can be no accountability and without accountability we cannot stop the tide of corruption and without the tide of corruption being stopped, our country stands the risk of being a failed state. This we must not allow to happen. This is why in Chapter 6, suggestions are made to improve governance in the country. Among these are the need to have Accountant-General for Federal Government as different from that of the federation and a six-man Presidency for the country to ensure equity in resource allocation. EDDY OMOLEHINWA - University of Lagos 28th January 2021
