Indigenisation of Nigeria’s Economy: Appraising the Second and Third National Development Plans, 1970-1980

Abstract

The journey of Nigeria’s development planning began in the 1940s.
From 1945 up to the first decade of independence, several kinds of
economic plans were experimented but there were two major
development plans that markedly bracketed the country’s economic
landscape within the period: first was the ‘Ten Year Plan of Development
and Welfare for Nigerians 1946-1955’ and the other was the ‘First
National Development Plan 1962-1968’, later extended to 1970. These
plans, though, largely framed and supervised on colonial character, to a
certain degree, stimulated economic growth and marginally improved the
material condition of the people. However, a close study shows that none
of these plans up to 1968 was able to factor ‘indigenisation of economy’
as a critical precondition for Nigeria’s development until the Second and
Third National Development Plans were designed. Therefore, the paper
examines how ‘economic indigenisation’ was pursued, and the extent of
its outcome, in the light of development and decolonization in Nigeria’s
Second and Third National Development Plans. The discourse is
underpinned with ‘dependency theory’ as the most relevant framework of
analysis. It adopts the qualitative method of research where facts are
analyzed in relation to events that informed them, and relied mainly on
published literature and official reports as sources of information. The
paper, in its findings, argues that indigenisation as ‘a national
development goal’ was very visible in the two development plans, and to
some extent impactful, but, nevertheless, suffered external and internal
‘contradictions’ in its practical pursuit which the then Nigerian
government could not foresee, or perhaps, shy away from. In as much as
we lament over this situation, there is optimism that with the ‘right
economic indigenisation’ Nigeria’s development as well as her complete
decolonisation is guaranteed.