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Pirate Capitalism and the Inert Economy of Nigeria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Sayre P. Schatz
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Extract

Two these are presented in this article. The first is that since the great surge in oil revenues during 1973—1974, there has emerged in Nigeria an intert economy. By this I mean an economy which has reacted passively to the increased revenues, but which has had no growth-generating power of its own outside of the crude oil-producing sector. The other-than-oil economy has not had any internal ebgine of growth. In support of this thesis, I shall make three points: (1) the growth of Nigeria' economy, apart form oil, has been strikingly small, give the huge increase in oil revenues; (2) even the linited growth rate has been dwindling; and (3) the pattern of the growth that has been achieved suggests a passive response to an exogenous stimulus.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , March 1984 , pp. 45 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

page 46 note 1 The increase in oil revenues was considerably greater in international terms (measured in dollars) than is shown by the naira figures, for the local currency appreciated in value as a result of the magnitude of the foreign-exchange earnings generated by oil.

page 47 note 1 G.D.P. data were compiled for fiscal years, which ran from 1 April to 31 March (until 1980), while oil-revenue figures were available for calender years.

page 47 note 2 For 1973–1974 to 1981, the average annual increase was 4·1 per cent.

page 47 note 3 The comparison cannot be extended to 1982 because no figures are available for current-price G.D.P.

page 48 note 1 Sources: Federal Office of Statistics, Nigerian Gross Domestic Product and Allied Macro-Aggregates, 1973/74–1981 (Lagos, 1982), and (for 1982) Federal Republic of Nigeria, Federal Government Budget in Brief. The figures from 1979–1980 are termed ‘provisional’.Google Scholar

page 48 note 2 Sources and notes, same as for Table 2.

page 49 note 1 Federal Government of Nigeria, Outline of the Fourth Development Plan, 1981–85 (Lagos, 1981), p. 6. Similar statements were made in the Third Plan.Google Scholar

page 49 note 2 Superimposed upon the decelerating growth tendency is a cyclical movement, described by Schatz, Sayre P., ‘Nigeria's Petro-Political Fluctuation’, in Whitaker, C. S. Jr, (ed.), Perspectives on the Second Republic in Nigeria (Waltham, Mass., 1981), pp. 35–40,Google Scholar and in Issue: a quarterly journal of Africanist opinion (Los Angeles), XI, 1–2, Spring-Summer 1981, pp. 35–40, to be analysed further in a forthcoming study covering the period 1973–83.

page 50 note 1 The statement about government spending in 1981 and 1982 represents my estimate, since no budgetary data have been compiled for the years since 1980, a deficiency about which Nigerian Central Bank officials complain.

page 51 note 1 Source: Central Bank of Nigeria.

page 52 note 1 The increase in imports of material goods in 1980 was N2,000 million, while the increase in current-price G.D.P. was N3,400 million. Thus the marginal propensity to import was 64·7 per cent.

page 53 note 1 See Schatz, Sayre P., Nigerian Capitalism (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1977), pp. 65–147.Google Scholar

page 54 note 1 Ibid. pp. 39–54.

page 55 note 1 Ibid. chs. 1–3, particularly pp. 3–4.

page 55 note 2 ‘The Nigerian political class achieved political power in a setting that was conducive to the abuse of that power’ Schatz, op. cit. p. 151.

page 56 note 1 Given the recent dominance of the National Party of Nigeria, with its ability to have attracted to an increasing degree those from all ethnic groups who wanted ‘a share of the national cake’, it appears that there may now be occurring, in this phase of pirate capitalism, the difficult and even traumatic process of the formation of a bourgeoisie that is truly national rather than regionally or ethnically based.

page 56 note 2 I have borrowed the ‘ailment’ formulation from an analysis of inflation in the developed economies by Robert F. Heilbroner, ‘Inflationary Capitalism’, in The New Yorker, 8 October 1979, pp. 121–41.