Introduction
This paper has the central aim of locating development planning within the discourse on developmental statehood, with reference to Nigeria. It considers the dynamic role of the state in employing development planning to facilitate intersectoral resource transfers for the purpose of structural transformation in the post-independence period in Nigeria. In doing so, the paper puts forward justification and evidence for challenging summary dismissals of a developmental role for the state in Africa.
The paper draws on the analytical framework of the enhanced developmental state paradigm (EDSP), which derives from the way in which developmental states (Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Indonesia) managed classical constraints on industrialisation: savings, marketed surplus, demand and labour between the late nineteenth century and the 1970s (Ikpe 2013).1 It examines the intersectoral resource transfers from agriculture to the industrial sector in post-independent Nigeria with reference to noted constraints on industrialisation, with particular attention to the savings constraint.
The EDSP has two components (Ikpe 2013). The primary component finds that developmental states managed savings constraints by extensively taxing the agricultural sector and manipulating foreign exchange rates in relation to agricultural trade. They also addressed marketed surplus constraints by appropriating food from producers at low prices, obliging producers to pay for land, inputs and credit in rice, widespread public investments to improve agricultural output and pursuing protectionist policies in relation to the agricultural sector. They dealt with demand constraints by protecting the domestic industrial sector from competition and making efforts to improve agricultural incomes. They mitigated labour constraints by locating industrial activity in rural areas and investing in rural infrastructure and social services to enable pluriactivity as well as prioritising land- and labour-saving technology to facilitate the outflow of labour from agriculture. However, we focus on the management of the savings constraint as this was the only sphere within which development planning was utilised.
The secondary component of the EDSP finds that the developmental state ensured fiscal linkages between agriculture and oil by enabling fiscal transfers to the former through the provision of subsidised inputs and access to credit to producers alongside rural infrastructural developments. This secondary component of the EDSP is important for this analysis of Nigeria as development planning was a major tool for engaging agriculture in the context of a buoyant mineral economy.
In the second section of the paper we examine the post-independence economic context within which development planning was pursued. Next we consider the state's use of development plans to enable intersectoral transfers for industrialisation as the drive for development using the EDSP: in the third section we consider resource flows into agriculture as the mainstay of the post-independent Nigerian economy (for a brief period) in order to strengthen it for its contribution to industrial activity; and in the fourth section we consider transfers to the industrial sector from the dualised primary sector. In the fifth section we reflect on the post-development planning period as driven by changes in global economic and development intellectual debates and policy. In the final section we conclude with the examination of the era of development planning vis-à-vis the transformation agenda of the Nigerian state based on the success/failure of its developmental pursuits. We also consider the reality of state-led developmental achievements with the dominance of neoliberalism in the global development policy space.
The ‘post-independent/post-colonial’ Nigerian state and its agenda for development
Young (2004) suggests that until 1985, states in Africa could be referred to as ‘post-independent’ and ‘post-colonial’ as they were developmentally driven and in control of their development agendas, even if with some qualities of the colonial state in the latter rendition. It is in the post-independent/post-colonial period that Mkandawire (2001, 295) has revealed that states in Africa acted in a developmentalist manner as their leadership was driven by a developmentalist ideology.
In fact, industrial policy in Nigeria is described by the National Bureau of Public Enterprises as occurring in two phases: state-led import substitution industrialisation strategy over 1970–1985; and widespread economic liberalisation over 1986 to the present day (BPE 2006). These periods also coincided with the dominance of national development planning and its eventual demise in 1985 with the advent of structural adjustment programmes.
In line with dominant ideas of the time, the Nigerian state embarked on development planning, in the formulation and execution of four national development plans. In this form the Nigerian state has had the greatest resonance with developmental states, when one considers the post-independence period as a whole. Mkandawire (2001) has reflected on the extensive adoption of the development planning approaches across Africa in the post-independent period and interprets this as a basis for the interrogation of the developmental state discourse (with reference to its seeming dismissal of African experiences).
However, development planning in Nigeria was defined by a number of social, economic and political factors. These include: the ideological dominance of a strong role for the state alongside a burgeoning role for the emergent indigenous private sector; the post-independence expectations of socio-economic transformation that burdened new African nations, most idealised by the pursuit of industrialisation and improvements in social infrastructure; the change in the primary source of public revenue from agriculture to the oil economy; and the geographic and social location of related economic activity, i.e. urban-based industrial activity and rural-based agriculture.
The independent Nigerian state drove its socio-economic transformation agenda with its control of an expanding financial base that was pursued through widespread nationalisation and indigenisation policies. Beveridge (1991) details how over 1970 to 1979 the Nigerian state acquired and gradually raised its stake in the major oil corporations to a maximum of 60% to ensure its access to profits, mirroring oil-producing nations in North Africa and the Middle East.
With this financial backing, the post-independent/post-colonial Nigerian state acted as the surrogate capitalist to enable development. Ihonbvere (1989) and Schatz (1977, 5) show that the Nigerian state attempted to play this role on account of the limited access to capital of the emerging (indigenous) private sector. Given this shortcoming, a main target of the state's development initiatives was the indigenous private sector as confirmed by its extensive indigenisation policy. From the Second National Development Plan in 1970, the Nigerian state elucidated its position on the imprudence of relying on foreign enterprise owing to possible diversion between their objectives and national aspirations (FGN 1970, 289; Hoogvelt 1979; Adejugbe 1984). This was against the background of the critique of the First National Development Plan as not having paid attention to the indigenous private sector (Lewis 1967). As such, the planning process interacted with the private sector but with a focus on its indigenisation.
Van Donge et al. (2012) have presented Nigeria's indigenisation policy as an instrument for elite settlements by the state. Indeed, Ndongko and Abrahams (1982) have argued that business and political elites benefited exclusively from these policies, thereby reinforcing socio-geographic disparities between urban and rural spaces given their dominance in the former. However, as Mkandawire and Soludo (2003, 25) have noted, the outcomes of the planning process cannot be reduced conclusively to these shortcomings, as the use of public resources for elite settlements has occurred in other well-performing contexts, particularly in Asia.
There was a clear interaction between colonial experience and the ideological context of nationalisation and indigenisation policy in the post-independent/post-colonial period. Schatz (1977, 151) makes the point that economic policy was greatly influenced by a political and social context of ‘Nigerian feelings of discrimination and deprivation under colonialism’. The combination of these factors appears to have influenced the state's attempts to engineer capital accumulation for industrialisation (as development) with the use of its resource base.
It is important to note that the state was not necessarily a cohesive whole, as evidenced by the civil war that was also motivated by economic and political power struggles among various elite constituencies in the guise of ethnic groups. Nonetheless, there was also a post-civil war energy that drove the state's developmental objectives and nationalist tendencies. Schatz (1977, 21) suggests that the 1967–1970 civil war stimulated industrial production owing to import restrictions and in addition the (victorious) Nigerian state felt a confidence that it exerted in its economic policy in the reconstruction phase. Fajana (1977) points out that the Nigerian state needed to conserve its foreign exchange to prosecute the civil war and so wide-ranging import restrictions were put in place which forced domestic industrial activity.
Using development planning for intersectoral resource transfer between oil and agriculture
The secondary component of the EDSP reflects on the state's use of fiscal linkages to enable transfers between agriculture and oil through the provision of subsidised inputs and credit to producers alongside rural infrastructural developments. The analysis of resource transfer between the oil and agricultural sectors begins with a review of the contribution of oil revenue to government revenue and then onward contributions to agriculture as reflected in planned and actual agricultural expenditure from the four national development plans.
Assessing net resource transfers between the oil and agricultural sectors through public expenditure in Nigeria is challenging because of the problematic data on the two sectors. Nonetheless, we utilise data on customs and excise duties to obtain an indication of net resource transfer patterns from the agricultural sector to government revenue. This draws on the fact that trade taxes have traditionally constituted a key component of the contribution of the agricultural sector to public revenue. Aboyade (1971) finds that agricultural exports supplied foreign exchange and government revenue was especially dependent on the related trade taxes, especially export taxes in the post-independence period.
From Table 1, we see a direct relationship between total government revenue and total oil revenue (as a proportion of government revenue) over 1970–1985. The ratio of customs and excise duties as a proportion of government revenue is dwarfed by increases in oil revenue receipts. This discrepancy between government revenue from the oil and agricultural sectors can be explained by the reduced significance of non-oil exports in this period, and thus tax receipts, particularly from agriculture.
The 1970s saw the marked decline of agricultural exports from about 10% to almost 0% (of merchandise exports) by 1979. This decline began in 1964 from about 18%, stabilising at 10% (of merchandise exports) by 1967. The downward trend of agricultural exports as a proportion of total exports was balanced by the exponential increase of fuel exports from 1968 at about 19% (of merchandise exports) to almost 100% in 1979 (World Bank 2007). This pattern remains unchanged as fuel exports in 2008 stood at 92% (of merchandise exports) and agricultural exports were at 1% (of merchandise exports) (World Bank 2010).
From the 1970s, fiscal transfers to agriculture have been reliant on the sustained increases in oil revenue accruing to the government. The pattern of increased fiscal transfer to the agricultural sector does not however match the rise in government revenue from vast increases in oil revenue. In the period 1962–1985, planned government expenditure on agriculture only ever reached 13.6% of total planned expenditure during the First National Development Plan; this is significant as it is prior to the oil boom. Actual expenditure fares better in the Fourth National Developmental Plan, at 18.2% of total actual government expenditure; this is also interesting because it follows the oil price shocks. It is a substantial improvement on actual expenditure on agriculture at 9.8% of total actual expenditure in the First National Development Plan period.
Although the share of planned public expenditure on agriculture declined (until the Fourth National Development Plan), actual expenditure grew considerably. Kwanashie, Ajilima, and Garba (1998, 32) note that the 1970s signalled ‘what could be considered a determined effort to transform the agricultural sector’ by the Nigerian state. They emphasise the reality of significant public investment, albeit characterised as failed owing to the preponderance of large-scale agricultural projects including the National Accelerated Food Production Programme and Operation Feed the Nation.2 Infrastructural investment in the agricultural sector was extensive. Even with the drop in public agricultural expenditure as a proportion of total public expenditure, in the Third National Development Plan there were major investments in irrigation infrastructure to the tune of N975.6 m, constituting 31% of the total actual expenditure on agriculture (FGN 1970).
Lewis (1967) reveals that the planning process was not based sufficiently on technical knowledge and analyses owing to low capacities in the human capital base. These challenges with development planning during the First National Development Plan, particularly regarding technical prowess, remained a factor for subsequent plans. An example of this was the mis-estimation of real GDP growth rate over 1970–1974 at 6.2% annually against the actual rate of 12.3% (UN 1977). Such errors reflected the propensity for failures to anticipate and account for the impact of oil revenue on the stipulated plans. As such, there were weaknesses in adapting to variations in public revenue vis-à-vis the real sectors of the economy that led to major revisions of the Fourth National Development Plan (Ayo 1988, 15).
As part of the planning process, agricultural investment was biased towards large-scale cultivation systems, despite the dominance of small-scale producers. This is in spite of the fact that the performance rate of the non-Fadama irrigation capacity of 154,517 hectares has been recorded at being 20% on average as compared with 100% of the Fadama (small-scale) irrigation capacity of 55,000 hectares for rice production (FAO 2005). The public investment bias towards large-scale irrigation systems has been linked to underlying political factors and failures that influenced the planning process. For instance, Palmer-Jones (1987) and Adams (1991) have argued that though seemingly an economic waste, the investment in the irrigation systems was driven by powerful elements of the political elite, given the benefits they accrued from expensive construction contracts.
Public expenditure in agriculture also included providing inputs such as seeds and fertiliser as well as training in extension services. This was at the heart of various programmes in the 1970s and early 1980s such as the integrated rural development projects (IRDPs) and the agricultural development projects. There were also a series of institutions established to provide credit to producers including the Rural Banking Scheme, where the Central Bank mandated all commercial banks to establish rural presence and have 30% of their credit facilities availed to rural-based activities, the creation of the National Agricultural and Cooperative Bank in 1973 and the Agricultural Credit Guarantee Scheme Fund, which guaranteed loans to commercial farmers (Osinubi 2003; Mogues et al. 2008, 49–51).
Although the development plans facilitated the allocation of resources, the policy fundamentals of expending the resources determined the outcome ultimately. In spite of the transfers between the agricultural and oil sectors, the performance of the former suffered, with agricultural exports as a proportion of total exports falling from 36% in 1970 to 4% in 1980 and agricultural sectoral growth averaging 0.5% for the same period (World Bank 2006). The performance of the IRDPs was highly criticised for their failure to generate net returns on investment, organisational lapses and detrimental policies of resource allocation biased against the peasantry (Wallace 1980).
A key theme regarding this failure has been the support for large-scale agriculture at the expense of small-scale producers, despite their dominance in the production system. Furthermore, the efficiency of the dominant small-scale production system was clear, from its critical role in the provision of public revenue in the immediate post-independent period to the better performance of irrigation systems that was noted earlier. In essence, even in rural contexts, social stratifications were reinforced so that capitalist/commercial farmers with urban-based affiliation were prioritised vis-à-vis the dominant small-scale producers without a substantial basis, given the limited recourse to technical rigour within the planning process.
The poor treatment of the rural agricultural sector speaks to its political weakness with the advent of a dominant petroleum sector. Abdu and Marshall (1990) show that in the development planning period, the agricultural policy regime failed to engage the realities of the rural population. There appears to have been an absent rural/agricultural aristocracy that could have engaged in power struggles on behalf of the agricultural sector, even if with underlying economic and political motivations. In fact Hill (1982, chapter 16) makes the point that the failure of the Nigerian state to identify and utilise established social hierarchies within the agrarian system challenged the progress of the sector.
Using development planning to save, accumulate and transfer to the industrial sector
The primary component of the EDSP is concerned with the state's use of intersectoral resource transfers between the agricultural and industrial sectors to pursue structural change. Because development planning was used essentially to plan and execute fiscal transfers towards particular objectives, we are concerned with its relevance for addressing savings constraints. The discussion on intersectoral transfers between the primary and secondary sectors focuses on fiscal linkages that were enabled via development plans as well as the underlying economic, political and social dynamics that have influenced related processes and outcomes.
As already noted, taxation was an important means of surplus extraction from the agricultural sector. The institutional mechanism for extracting these taxes was comprised of marketing boards that emerged under British colonial rule. Helleiner (1964) described the post-independent marketing boards as the central structure for the Nigerian state's agricultural surplus extraction to finance its development agenda. Export and producer taxes were levied on producers and were accompanied by widespread marketing board surpluses (Ladipo 1990).
It is difficult to ascertain the direct contribution of agriculture to total government revenue during the First National Development Plan period immediately after independence. However, the dominance of the sector is clear with its contribution of N10,200 m to the total GDP of N17,586 m (FGN 1970). In the Second National Development Plan, total expenditure was N2237.7 million, of which expenditure on manufacturing/industry totalled N85.5 million, against government revenue of N9402 million with trade taxes totalling N2357 million and oil revenue totalling N6181 million (see Tables 1 and 2). From these data, trade taxes, and therefore agriculture, played a reduced role in the execution of the Plan owing to the increasing dominance of oil revenue.
| Development plans | Total planned expenditure | Total actual expenditure | Total planned expenditure in agriculture | Total planned expenditure on agriculture (%) | Total actual expenditure on agriculture | Total actual expenditure (%) | Government revenue from customs and excise duties | Government revenue from oil revenue | Total government revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First National Development Plan (1962–1968) | 1353 | 1073 | 184 | 14 | 105 | 10 | – | – | – |
| Second National Development Plan (1970–1974) | 3350 | 2238 | 332 | 10 | 219 | 10 | 2357 | 6181 | 9402 |
| Third National Development Plan (1975–1980) | 43,313 | 29,434 | 3043 | 7 | 2107 | 7 | 6205 | 30,980 | 41,257 |
| Fourth National Development Plana – reviewed after oil price shocks (1981–1985) | 42,200 | 17,334 | 5400 | 13 | 3147 | 18 | 12,534 | 51,390 | 73,844 |
aThe planned and actual expenditure figures on agriculture in the Fourth National Development Plan include expenditure on water resources as it is listed alongside other components of agricultural expenditure including livestock and fishery. This is indicative of the consideration of water resources as integral to agricultural production especially with regard to public expenditure (planned and actual) on water resources.
Source: Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin 2005 Volume 16; First, Second, Third and Fourth National Development Plans.
| Development plans | Total GDP from agriculture for development plan period | Total GDP from mining for development plan period | Total GDP for development plan period | Expenditure on manufacturing/ industry |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Second National Development Plan (1970–1974) | 16,946 | 25,203 | 60,159.3 | 85.5 |
| Third National Development Plan (1975–1980) | 36,848.4 | 37,058.8 | 156,647 | 2569.7 |
| Fourth National Development Plan (1980–1984) | 19,786 | 26,613.51 | 142,489.9 | 861.9 |
Source: Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin 2005 Volume 16; First, Second, Third and Fourth National Development Plans.
Between 1970 and 1974, GDP from agriculture increased from N10,200 m to N16,946 m, however its proportion of a much higher total GDP of N60,159.3 million decreased to 28% from 58% (see Table 2). These changes were the result of the exponential increase in the GDP generated from the mining sector, which stood at N25,203 million in the period 1970–1974 increasing from N707 million in 1962–1968 (FGN 1970).
Both the relative contribution of trade taxes to total public revenue and the proportion of GDP generated from agriculture continued on a downward trend in relation to government expenditure on industry. Table 1 shows that while trade taxes were on the increase through the Second, Third and Fourth National Development Plans, their proportional contribution to government revenue declined.
By the end of the development planning period, the state's engagement with the agricultural sector changed irrevocably. The taxation that had dogged agriculture in the state's drive for surplus extraction was largely replaced by subsidies by 1982 (Oyejide 1986, 25–26).
This displacement of the revenue-generation role of agriculture was emphasised in the development planning process, as the key source of revenue became the oil economy. This dynamism challenged the planning process so that, rather than rely on feasibility studies, emphasis was placed on oil revenue windfalls (from 1974). Schatz (1977, 47) has argued that ‘economic reasoning gave way to economic enthusiasm’ as a result of the abundance of oil resources. Furthermore, the planning process did not anticipate the challenges that this change would herald for the agricultural sector.
Underlying political dynamics in relation to the planning process also played out in tensions within the bureaucracy so that those at the helm of the state's control over finance, i.e. the Ministry of Finance, were more influential than the officials at the Ministry of Economic Planning who led the planning process (Schatz 1977, 47).
The increasing centralisation of the Nigerian state has been a critical influence on the deterioration of agriculture's contribution to addressing the savings constraint. The post-independent state adopted a federal system of government and the immediate post-independence relationship between surplus extraction and agriculture was reliant on the regional production systems and market structures that prevailed. Andrae and Beckman (1985, 4) find that extraction from the agricultural sector utilised the regional marketing boards, which also constituted a powerful source of patronage and consolidated political activity on a regional basis. Thus, regionally organised agriculture was the central base of contestation and struggle for accumulation as the main revenue source for the state.
With military rule from 1966, the basis for political and financial power struggle and contestation remained agriculture because, although there was increased oil production in commercial quantities, the civil war hampered access as the secessionist Biafra harboured the location for the oil resources. It was only following the civil war that oil production could be optimised and by 1970 production was at one million barrels a day and at two million barrels a day by 1973 (Andrae and Beckman 1985, 4).
The centralisation of state power was driven financially by state control of oil production and achieved politically through military rule and the declining significance of the regionally based agricultural economy and political system. The consolidation of a central political power base in successive military regimes with near sole access to a highly centralised oil economy undermined the importance of regional political power structures that accompanied state dependence on the agricultural system. This transition effectively ushered in the displacement of agriculture as the principal revenue source for the Nigerian state. This point highlights the shortcomings of the development planning process with regard to addressing agricultural interests because of the reduced political and economic significance of the sector and thereby the agricultural elites that might have influenced the system in its favour.
The end of development planning and the advent of neoliberalism in development policy
From the mid 1980s, development planning was ousted in line with the increasingly dominant neoliberal policy directions of the Washington Consensus and subsequently the Post-Washington Consensus. In essence, from a state-driven, medium- to long-term, planned programmatic engagement with the economy in the 1962–1985 period, the structural adjustment programme (SAP) and the subsequent period advanced a choppy project-based approach including the use of rolling plans that insisted on a reduced role for the state, also confirmed by the low and declining budget allocations for recurrent public expenditure (CBN 2005). Most recently, there has been the use of Medium Term Expenditure Frameworks. These are antithetical to the development planning ethos as they lack any medium- or long-term developmental agenda but are rather focused on the operational strategy of fiscal revenue generation and expenditure alongside blanket subscriptions to neoliberal dictates of low interest rates and market-driven foreign exchange rates (FGN 2011).
The SAP was conceived by the international financial institutions at the height of the Washington Consensus, which emphasised the superiority of market-led processes and the primacy of the price mechanism. The period was thereby characterised by the agenda of a reduced role for the state. The widespread negative impact of the SAP on the Nigerian economy is well documented (Nwosu 1991; Mustapha 1993; Gibbon and Olukoshi 1996; Alaofin 1999). Professor Adebayo Adedeji (former head of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and Federal Minister of Economic Planning and Reconstruction, 1971–1975) is reported to have described the SAP as having done more harm to Africa than all the years of colonisation put together (Mkandawire and Soludo 2003). Importantly, Oyejide (1991) clarifies that although strict adherence to policy frameworks tapered off in order to mitigate worsening socio-economic conditions, the SAP reinforced the extent, degree and outcomes of economic liberalisation structurally.
The SAP was followed by the Vision 2010 agenda, adopted in 1996 as the blueprint for the Nigerian economy. Manufacturing featured as a desired objective but in abstract terms with no clear plan for its achievement. It was simply stated that manufacturing should constitute 24% of GDP (Vision 2010 1996, 3). Remaining consistent with the economic liberalisation agenda, this was to be done on the basis of a market-oriented and private-sector-driven strategy (Ibid. 5).
The follow-up to Vision 2010 was the National Economic Empowerment Development Strategy (NEEDS) – the World Bank-led Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers adapted for Nigeria. It was a medium-term economic strategy over the period 2003–2007. NEEDS furthered economic liberalisation and the shrinking of the public sector as the development position, with a focus on poverty reduction/eradication (NPC 2004, 7). NEEDS is a product of the Post-Washington Consensus, a discourse in which there has been some alleviation in the pessimism associated with the state's engagement in the economy, represented forcefully by Joseph Stiglitz. But the overtone remains neoliberal and one of a limited role for the state in so far as it functions with the understanding of the supremacy of the market (Fine 2002).
The difference between this policy period and the development planning period is especially clear in the African context. Van Donge et al. (2012, 12) have shown that, as compared with South East Asia, in Africa neoliberal policy regimes have been accompanied by a complete withdrawal of the state without ‘institutional structures through which positive interventions can continue’. For Nigeria, this is evidenced by the fact that the Fourth National Development Plan was the final one of its kind. Furthermore, the demise in status of development planning was accompanied politically by the diminished status of the Ministry of Economic Planning, which was converted to the National Planning Commission in 1992, effectively having an advisory role as against its former executive functions. On this note, the ‘denigration and vilification’ of the state apparatus, in discourse and policy terms, that characterised the period led to the ‘fatal weakening of bureaucracies’ and thus potential to carry out planning-related activities (Mkandawire and Soludo 2003, 26).
Focusing on agriculture, the SAP impacted on planning activities through the elimination of several public institutions that supported related processes such as production and marketing. These included all of the marketing boards and almost 50% of the River Basin Development Authorities as well as extensive reductions in input subsidies (Usoro 1987; Mustapha 1993). The National Agricultural and Cooperative Bank was rendered moribund as a result of SAP-driven currency devaluation (Mogues et al. 2008, 50).
In addition to the increasingly neoliberal leaning of development policy post-1985, the oil resources that had been of value to the development planning era have been retrospectively presented as problematic in arguments akin to the natural resource curse thesis. Aliyu (2009) and Olomola and Adejumo (2006) present the petroleum sector as impacting adversely on GDP growth and broader development in Nigeria. The reputation of the Nigerian state suffered in relation to the dominance of oil resources, most prominently in its classification as a ‘rentier’ state. This label has been extended to the Nigerian state with the argument that, on account of its access to oil resources, it has insulated itself from broader society and is therefore unaccountable in expending these revenues and uninspired to pursue productive activity (Yates 1996; Lewis 1999; Omeje 2006).
This categorisation of the Nigerian state has drawn on a broader tide against the role of the state in development advanced most succinctly by the Washington Consensus. Olukoshi (2003) catalogues the various terms used to denote the negative connotation of the nature and operation of states in Africa, not least Nigeria, by what he terms the ‘neo-liberal political economy theorists’. He also cites these characterisations as reverberating with the Washington Consensus and its aversion to the role of the state in development.
From economic performance indicators, we find reason to differ with the pessimism that has been associated with the development planning period and the state's developmental pursuits. From Table 3 below, manufacturing sector growth peaked over the development planning period and has only been on a downward trend following the ‘withdrawal’ of the state. With this it is arguably worth reviewing the cynicism that has been associated with this period.
| Year | Agriculture average sectoral growth (%) | Manufacturing average sectoral growth (%) |
|---|---|---|
| 1961–1970 | 1.8 | 14.9 |
| 1971–1980 | 0.5 | 11.5 |
| 1981–1990 | 2.3 | 3.1 |
| 1991–2000 | 3.3 | 1.5 |
| 2000–2008 | 7.0 | – |
Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators (2010).
The negative characterisation of the Nigerian state as rentier is challenged by this outcome. The derided oil resources, though undeniably mismanaged, did lead to widespread investments that drove manufacturing, including the Kainji-River Niger Dam, the Port Harcourt Refinery, the Nigerian Security and Minting plant, the Jebba Paper Mill, the Niger Bridge and the Bacita Sugar Mill (Marcellus 2009). Indeed, even with the critique of the focus of development planning in Nigeria on industrialisation, the point is well made that, although dismissed as one of imprudence and waste (World Bank 1994), this period saw extensive public expenditure driven by an economic and arguably developmental agenda (Collier and Gunning 2008, 211; Henley 2012).
It is difficult to conjecture about the true impact of the subsequent reversal of the state-led developmental agenda on development outcomes. But Adedeji (1994, 119) suggests that the SAP saw ‘the World Bank and the IMF (whose policies approximate the collective will of the G-7 countries) [have] join[ed] with their indigenous political-economic compradors to unravel many of the major achievements of the first decade of Africa's postcolonial history’ as the drastic cuts in public spending on education, health care and infrastructure necessarily impeded development goals.
Conceptual challenges arise in the critique of the Nigerian state as rentier and otherwise that link in with problems with the treatment of the state and the market as separate and non-related entities. The notion of a rentier state is rooted in the tradition of the state–market dichotomy as it presupposes that the state is so distinct from its context that it can simply insulate itself if it wishes to do so. For instance, in the case of Nigeria, oil resources are denoted as guaranteeing the state autonomy, which, although desirable within the standard developmental state paradigm (also rooted in the state–market dichotomy),3 becomes a perversion within the rentier state thesis. Omeje (2008, 6) reflects on the ‘marked disconnect between rentierism and the well-established developmental function of the state’ but is unable to explain convincingly why the quality of ‘autonomy’ is positive in one case and negative in the other.
These contradictions highlight the challenge of examining the developmental prowess of the Nigerian state purely on account of outcomes without a focus on related processes and remaining confined to the framework of the state–market dichotomy that can ignore underlying economic, political and social dynamics. The EDSP challenges this as it takes a process-driven approach by considering the actions of the Nigerian state beyond the economic outcomes associated with industrialisation. It also does this with cognisance of the necessary interrelatedness between the state and its milieu, most especially the market. From the examination of the post-independent/post-colonial Nigerian state's use of development planning in this paper, it had clear objectives towards structural change that were pursued through the 1960s and 1970s alongside the engagement of the private sector.
Concluding remarks
The paper has shown that the post-independence/post-colonial Nigerian state pursued developmental objectives with great fervour through the development planning period. However, evidence on economic performance over this period calls these efforts into question. At the end of the development planning period, GDP value-added from the manufacturing sector reached 9% in 1985, rising from 5% in 1965 (World Bank 2007). For agriculture, although growth increased consistently, GDP value-added declined to 37% in 1985 from 55% in 1962 (World Bank 2007). These challenges culminated in a foreign debt crisis that saw non-concessional debt reach 108% of GDP in 1986, up from 64% in 1985 (GDF 2007).
In the deployment of the secondary component of the EDSP, the Nigerian state enabled fiscal linkages in fiscal transfers between oil and agriculture, however these did not principally target the majority smallholder agricultural producer constituency. From the primary component of the EDSP, there were efforts by the Nigerian state to address the savings constraint with the agricultural sector in the 1960s and the early 1970s. But from the early 1970s to date, this role of agriculture declined with the increasing dominance of oil revenue as a proportion of government revenue alongside the free fall in agricultural export levels in absolute and relative terms. The result of this was the near destruction of a fragile manufacturing sector forced to rely on a volatile oil economy that was undermined by global oil price shocks in the 1970s. It is important to stress that these observations do not warrant a dismissal of the Nigerian state's attempts at structural change as the most sustained advances in the manufacturing sector to date emanated from this period (see Table 3).
The post-development planning period was one of major shifts in development ideology and the global policy environment that views state ‘intervention’ as intrinsically antithetical to development progress. The increasing dominance of neoliberal ideology in development policy energised the move away from state-driven development planning, as was pursued in Nigeria beginning with SAP. This has had far-reaching implications for the role of the state in development, as well as the place of agriculture in industrialisation in Nigeria.
On a final note, much blame is laid at the feet of the global development policy but the engagement of the Nigerian state with this discourse must not be taken for granted. As underlying economic, political and social factors influenced approaches to structural change in the development planning era, they also informed the domestic adoption of neoliberal policy approaches in the post-development planning era as well as challenges with the planning process itself.
Although the struggle against dominant global neoliberal policy is overwhelming, one of the developmental states that informs the EDSP, Indonesia, exhibited a novel way of engagement that included a continued focus on structural transformation and the use of development plans even if it suffered with the East Asian financial crisis eventually. More obvious examples that have also interacted with neoliberalism and yet achieved some form of a developmental end are the BRIC countries, not least China, India and Brazil.
Kyung-Sup, Fine, and Weiss (2012, 3) have critically examined the diverse ways in which state-driven development policy has tried to negotiate the stranglehold of neoliberalism and how successive global crises are forcing a challenge to neoliberalism especially in the developed world; this is in spite of their continued ‘discouragement and distortion of developmental efforts of less developed states’. This is a necessary entry point for the developing world, especially African economies, to reflect on the development planning era holistically and reject the summary dismissal of this period as a failure. Rather there is a need to revisit the analyses of this period critically with a new lens that: focuses on processes and not simply outcomes; rejects the state–market dichotomy; and reflects on underlying economic, political and social factors that are at play, in order to draw lessons for the future.