ABSTRACT

The military regime of President Ibrahim Babangida has undertaken a domestic Structural Adjustment Program, closely linked with multilateral negotiations to reschedule the country's burdensome foreign debt and to obtain renewed sources of external financing. This chapter considers the development of Nigeria's privatization policy within the context of the state's expanding and increasingly problematic economic role. It provides a sketch of Nigeria's development strategy and a historical outline of the growth of the nation's public sector. Nigeria has experienced two broad phases in development strategy since the conclusion of the colonial era. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the government's economic role was interventionist and tutelary, but limited. The earliest state enterprises in Nigeria date from the late colonial period. As in many African countries, the colonial government established agricultural marketing boards during World War II. The boards purchased export crops from producers at prices below those of the world market, retaining the surplus for stabilization and welfare purposes.