ABSTRACT
Long exposure to the market and familiarity with monetary incentives in the colonial period had already brought into being a local entrepreneurial class. Nigeria seems to have an advantage over many other developing countries, an advantage which has increased with the development of its vast petroleum resources. Nevertheless industrialization has been slow and limited in character; the Nigerian economy still remains essentially a primary-producing economy, dependent upon exports to the world market. The British administrators' perception of the Nigerian economy came chiefly through its foreign trade, in which British merchant houses played a predominant role. The Nigerian economy represented a type of dependent, colonial capitalism dominated by the extra-territorial companies concerned principally with marketing the country's primary products. The foreign trading companies, including the largest of them, the United Africa Company, moved into the industrial sector on a growing scale from the mid-1950s, at the same time people took the lead in modernizing retail trade and distribution.
