ABSTRACT
This study locates the Nigerian colonial and postcolonial railroad development experience in the global context of the nexus between railroad technological innovation and socioeconomic development. After reviewing a wide range of literature, it seeks to answer some critical questions: In what ways did railroad development in Nigeria replicate the experience of the “mother country”? Can the history of railroads in Nigeria be a good model for analyzing colonial/postcolonial underdevelopment in the global south? It concludes that economic benefits from the construction of railroads in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were greater in Nigeria and other colonies than in the West. Second, backward and forward linkages to the Nigerian and global south’s economies were (are) very limited. This development reinforces the wide technological and industrial gap between the global north and south and perpetuates the economic dependence of the south on the north – on everything relating to the railroad industry.
