The Military as Agents of Development: The Nigerian Case-Study, 1970-1979

The nation of Nigeria, located in sub-Saharan West Africa, was considered one of the former European colonies possessing the potentials after its independence in 1960 to develop itself as both a viable political as well as economic system. The attributes so often identified with such successful developmental efforts of nations in the past--abundant human and natural resources--were the positive factors political scientists and economists considered as being of primary importance if the full potentials of Nigeria were to be realized. However, the road towards the economic and political development of Nigeria has not been an easy one due to several mitigating factors, including the colonial heritage of that nation, the prevalence of ethnic divisions within its economic and political institutions, and the misallocation of resources and priorities in the developmental schemes since independence. The height of the ethnic divisions culminated in the attempted secession of the Eastern state in 1965 which was followed by five years of civil war with the result that although the physical boundaries of the nation were preserved, the military felt it necessary to intervene in the political process with the result that it has been military men who have directed the subsequent development efforts within Nigeria since 1970. The concern of this paper is in evaluating the military regimes of the 1970s within Nigeria as agents of development, to try and to determine if in effect economic and political development has taken place throughout the decade, keeping in mind the close correlations between the two areas of development as espoused by several social scientists, most prominently Seymour Lipset. The primary orientation of the paper is towards the economic development plans of the 1970s and how effectively they have been at improving the Nigerian economic system with an emphasis on economic development as merely opposed to economic growth. Thus what data was studied was that concerned with the creation of the economic ...