Power Devolution and Economic Diversification in Nigeria Contexts, Connections and Contentions

Abstract

This research examined the nexus between power devolution and economic diversification in Nigeria. It did this by undertaking an intellectual introspection into how the prevailing monocultural economy and monocratic polity were imposed on Nigeria during the epoch of colonial rule and how they were subsequently retained by Nigerian politicians who are largely abdullistic capitalists because the inherited reality served their rapacious intents for primitive accumulation and political domination. The research employed the Marxian theory of Economic Determinism as its framework of analysis and Content Analysis as its methodology. In the end it was able to establish that Nigeria’s current monocratic political posture has inevitably negated any attempt at diversification because it has made the country excessively centrist, statist and ipso facto totalistic. It further established that as the nation’s center became over-empowered the component states and local councils were simultaneously disempowered and so were encouraged to be lazy and beggarly to the end that political patronage rather than economic productivity became the only recognizable access to the national cake which continues to get narrower and increasingly monocultural. The study also discovered that Nigeria of today is far more monocultural than it was in the colonial times. This is so because in the colonial era at least no fewer than four commodity exports were produced, namely cocoa, cotton, rubber, palm oil, groundnut, etc. But today, the only recognizable export commodity is oil at its crude state. It thus recommended among other things that: Government should make conscious and concerted effort at reviewing the country’s constitution in a way that transfers land management and resource control to the states and councils while the center maintains defence and external relations; and that, at the state and council levels, Government should encourage diversification by making available credit facilities at minimal interest rates.