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Economic Development in Nigeria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Wolfgang F. Stolper
Wolfgang F. Stolper
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Extract

Economic development and deliberate policy to accelerate its pace are relatively recent concepts, but the facts of development and economic policies to bring it about are, of course, ancient. Mercantilist, Colbertian, cameralism Smithian policies, all had in mind what now is called development; and much of the discussion of the stages of growth with which German economists during the nineteenth century were so preoccupied is obviously a preoccupation with growth at a time at which pure theory concentrated on the allocation of resources and on slowly developing an intellectual apparatus of which one could cease to be ashamed.

Type
Banquet Address
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , December 1963 , pp. 391 - 413
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1963

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References

a First figure refers to 1929, second figure to 1933.

b Fiscal year ending March 31 of following year. Excludes revenues and expenditures of native and local authorities.

c 1937.

d Except expenditures from loans for public works.

e Electricity Corporation of Nigeria only (or its predecessor), 1937.

f Electricity Corporation of Nigeria, Nigerian Electricity Supply Corporation, and industrial undertakings.

g First figure refers to 1919, second to 1921.

h First figure refers to 1929, second to 1931.

i Figures up to 1935–37 from Bauer, Peter, West African Trade (Cambridge [Engl.]: University Press, 1954), pp. 47Google Scholar, 195. Other figures from Statistical Abstracts for the British Empire (London), various issues, and Statistical Abstracts, Federation of Nigeria (Lagos: Federal Government Printer, 1960).Google Scholar

j In addition, there is substantial domestic production by modem factory methods.

k A flour mill was opened in 1962, leading to import substitution.

l Sugar growing and refining is to be started during the Plan period.

m In addition, there is substantial domestic production, but no figures are published. Capacity in 1960 was 400,000 tons.

n This is a rough conversion from imperial gallons to tons. A refinery is to come into operation by 1965.

o In addition, there is substantial domestic production. n.a.—Not available.

1 Fifth Report from the Select Committee on Estimates, Session 1947–48, Colonial Development, H.C. 181, June 30, 1948, pp. xviii–xix.Google Scholar

2 Fifth Report from Select Committee, p. viii.

3 A Revised Plan of Development and Welfare for Nigeria, 1951–1956 (Lagos: Government Printing Office, 1951).Google Scholar

4 IBRD, The Economic Development of Nigeria (Lagos: Federal Government Printer, 1954).Google Scholar

5 Federation of Nigeria, The Economic Program of the Government of the Federation of Nigeria, 1955–60, Sessional Paper No. 2 of 1956 (Lagos, 1956)Google Scholar. (There were, so far, five annual progress reports on the program.) Eastern Region of Nigeria, Outline of the Development Plan 1955–60 (Enugu, 1955)Google Scholar. Northern Region of Nigeria, A Statement of the Policy for Development, Finance Program 1955–60 (Kaduna, 1955)Google Scholar. Western Region of Nigeria, Development of the Western Region of Nigeria, 1955–60 (Ibadan, 1955).Google Scholar

6 No new program was issued by the Federal Government or by the Northern Region Government, beyond the annual capital budgets and, in the case of the Federal Government, the progress reports that now referred to the Economic Program for 1955–62. The Eastern Region produced a Development Programme 1958–62 (Enugu, 1958)Google Scholar. The Western Region Development Plan 1960–65 was published as Sessional Paper No. 17 of 1959 (Ibadan, 1959).Google Scholar

7 Report of the Coker Commission of Enquiry (4 vols.; Lagos: Federal Government Printer, 1962).Google Scholar

8 Federation of Nigeria, National Development Plan 1962–68 (Lagos: Federal Ministry of Economic Development, 1962). This document includes as chs. vi-ix the four governmental plans that were simultaneously put on the Tables of the four Houses of Representatives during the budget session of 1962. In addition, it contains the following chapters: (i) “The Need for Planning”; (ii) “Review of Past Developments”; (iii) “Problems and Potentials for Development”; (iv) “The National Plan— Goals and Objectives”; (v) “The National Plan—Prospects for the Nigerian Economy”; and chapter (x) “Problems and Policies in Implementing the Plan.”Google Scholar

In addition, there was separately published a technical appendix: Stolper, Wolfgang F., Prospects for the Nigerian Economy. Principles and Procedures Adopted in Projecting National Accounts, with the notation “This paper should be read in conjunction with Chapter 5 of the Nigerian National Development Plan 1962–68” (Lagos: Federal Government Printer, 1962)Google Scholar, which explains in further detail some of the planning methods used. (The implicit capital-output ratio is calculated wrongly. It should be lower.)

9 For a more detailed description of the institutional planning setup, see Peter B. Clark, “Economic Planning for a Country in Transition: Nigeria,” to be published in a volume in process of being edited by Everett E. Hagen.

10 Since published as: Okigbo, P. N. C., Nigerian National Accounts 1950–57 (Lagos: Ministry of Economic Development, 1961)Google Scholar. Dr. Okigbo, now Nigerian Ambassador to the Common Market, has also provided a short discussion under the same title in International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, African Studies in Income and Wealth, edited by Samuels, L. H. (London: Bowes and Bowes, 1963), ch. xii, p. 285–306.Google Scholar

11 Economic Survey of Nigeria, 1959 (Lagos, 1959).Google Scholar

12 Stanford Research Institute, The Economic Coordination of Transport Development in Nigeria, prepared for the J.P.C. by Hamlin Robinson, Stanton R. Smith, and Kenneth Clare, February 1961. (Available from the Federal Ministry of Economic Development, Lagos; £.2.)

13 SirAshby, Eric, Investment in Education (Lagos, 1960).Google Scholar

14 Archer, J. N., Educational Development in Nigeria, 1961–70 (Lagos, 1961)Google Scholar. It does not detract in the least from the importance and excellence of the Ashby Report that its implementation is economically impossible. Without a clear statement of aims such as the Ashby Report represents, it is impossible to work out the economic implications and to develop final feasible policies. As it turned out, the Governmental White Paper on Educational Policy set even more ambitious targets, particularly for the Northern Region, than the Ashby Report had suggested.

15 The use of “shadow” or “accounting” prices is logically justified in all cases in which the market prices do not reflect, for one reason or another, the real scarcities in the economy. The logic of shadow pricing is not in question, though the applicability in specific situations and the general repercussions must be traced through. I am discussing in detail the problem of how it looked from the planners’ viewpoint, in another context. Here it may be interesting only to note that the notion so frequently found in the theoretical discussion that “projects that are economically viable are not so financially” was not found to fit Nigerian realities. On the other hand, the contrary was frequently found: economically doubtful projects were made financially profitable by such transparently nonsensical practices as forgetting about depreciation or interest payments.

16 Development of a country is more than economics, and economic development is more than a plan even as broadly conceived as the Nigerian one. Much of the relevant information must be looked for, not in the Plan document, but in the budget speech of the Federal Minister of Finance, Chief Festus Sam Okotie-Eboh, of March 29, 1962. Chief Festus has the habit of naming his budgets. The budget presented concurrently with the Federal Program was christened the Mobilization Budget.

When the Economic Planning Unit insisted that hidden subsidies had to be cut out of the budget and the economy, they were accused of “having no heart,” of having an undue economic bias, of not understanding social factors. There is a general presumption that subsidies are “social” and that they distribute income from the rich to the poor. No one in his right mind wishes to make the provision of health or of schools subject to the ability of the individual to pay for it, though even here—as schools and health do require real resources—the economist cannot simply bow out of the picture. See the discussion of the recurrent budget on this point.

At the same time, people who in underdeveloped countries can afford electricity, cars, or telephones hardly belong to the poorest classes. To insist that as a group they pay for the services they consume means, in effect, easing the burden on the “general” taxpayer who, in the African context, is a poor fanner in the bush. Something similar is true for subsidized housing for the civil service and for many other hidden subsidies that we tried—in part successfully—to eliminate. It is one thing to reduce producer prices to the farmer in the bush in order to finance honest development that will benefit him in the future. It is something different—and both morally and politically unbearable—to tax him so that a new privileged class may arise.

17 It is obvious that as the former Head of the Economic Planning Unit in the Federal Ministry, I am in no position to publish more than is officially available. The best published critique of the Federal Program was made by Dr. Ojetunji Aboyade of University College, Ibadan, who at the time of his criticism unfortunately had only the federal program and not the whole of the National Development Plan available. See his “A Critique of the Plan,” Nigerian Journal of Economics and Social Studies, IV, No. 2 (July 1962), 110–15.Google Scholar His critique was based also on the general outline of the plan given by W. F. Stolper, “The Main Features of the 1962–68 National Plan,’ ibid. pp. 85–91, and by L. M. Hansen, “Methods of Economic Programming and Analysis in the Plan,” ibid. pp. 92–109.