Abstract
The concepts of economic development and development planning in Nigeria were suffused with the philosophy of Eurocentric diffusionism through modernization. Modernization became influential in Nigeria’s development trajectory from the late colonial period when the American version of modernization became hegemonic . A significant component of modernization was the devaluation and denigration of indigenous Nigerian cultures along with the simultaneous promotion of the Euro-American culture as the epitome of civilization that non-Western cultures should strive to attain. This notion, under the concept of “pattern variables,” promoted the dichotomous idea of a hierarchy of cultures under which the Euro-American culture was at the peak and the Nigerian and other African cultures at the lowest level.1 Nigerian indigenous cultures were described as primitive, backward, barbaric, and cannibalistic and, therefore, incapable of sustaining any meaningful development. The European conquest of Nigerian societies was portrayed as a benevolent act meant to save Nigerians from themselves and civilize them as epitomized by the concept of “the civilizing mission.” But as has been demonstrated by orientalist scholars and other critics of Eurocentrism in the Third World, this myth of the civilizing mission was merely used to mask the European imperialist mission of exploitation and domination.2
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Notes
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The work of Paul Baran provided the initial theoretical foundation for the structuralist critique of the kind of developmentalism promoted by development economists. See P. Baran, The Political Economy of Growth, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1957. However, this approach was refined and popularized by Andre Gunder Frank, whose work greatly influenced the works of those who applied the dependency and underdevelopment perspective to Africa.
See A. G. Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969. For some of the works that applied this perspective to Africa, see Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa,
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See R L. Sklar, “The New Modernization,” Issue, Vol. 23, No. 1, 1995, 19–20; Ruttan, “What Happened to Political Development?,” 272–273; and Mkandawire, “The Crisis in Economic Development,” 223–225.
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Apart from criticism from African scholars and civil societies, the influential United Nations organ, the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) published a report in which it harshly criticized SAP. The report went on to recommend issues such as popular participation in the political and economic affairs of African countries, rural and grassroots empowerment, subsidies for important social sectors that affect the lives of the majority of African peoples, state intervention in African economies, and the development of African alternatives to the adjustment programs. See Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), African Alternative Framework to Structural Adjustment Programme for Economic Recovery and Transformation (AAF-SAP), Addis Ababa: United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, 1989. It has been claimed that the World Bank’s attempts at addressing issues like popular participation, grassroots empowerment, and the development of rural areas was partly aimed at undercutting the criticisms of the ECA. Indeed the World Bank rushed to publish a report (Africa’s Adjustment and Growth in the 1980s) at the same time that the ECA was presenting its draft to a meeting of African finance ministers in Malawi. See C. Lancaster, “Economic Reform in Africa: Is it Working?,” in O. Obasanjo and H. d’Orville eds., The Leadership Challenge of Economic Reforms in Africa, New York: Crane Russak, 1991, 100–101. The publication of the long-term perspective study was the culmination of this exercise of preempting and undermining serious and credible criticism of SAP from within Africa.
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See Toyo, “Is Our Econo Planned?,” 10; Berri ed., Planning a Socialist Economy, 26–31; and F. Archibugi et al., “Planning for Development,” in S. Holland ed., Beyond Capitalist Planning, Oxford: Basil Blackwell and Mott, 1978, 184–199.
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See Nigerian Economic Society, Perspective Planning for Nigeria: Proceedings of the Nigerian Economic Society Annual Conference, Lagos, May 16–19, 1989, Ibadan, Nigeria: Nigerian Economic Society, 1989.
J. Dibua, “Collapse of Purpose: Ibrahim Babangida, 1985–1993,” in L. A. Nwachuku and G. N. Uzoigwe eds., Troubled Journey: Nigeria Since the Civil War, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2004, 207–235.
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Dibua, J.I. (2013). Theoretical and Conceptual Foundations of Development Planning. In: Development and Diffusionism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137286659_2
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