ECONOMIC EMPOWEREMENT DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY AND NIGERIA’S NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT: AN OVERVIEW

Abstract

Starting from the late 1970s, due to the astronomical socio-political crises Nigeria has experimented with varying degrees of reform packages aimed at resolving these crises. However, these reform programmes instead of ameliorating these crises seemed to have deepened it and thus threw the economy on the throes of acute indebtedness and dependence. In 2003, the civilian government in Nigeria initiated yet a new reform package proclaimed as homegrown strategies to rectify the lingering structural rigidities and bottlenecks in the economy. This reform is based on National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) – revised version of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) of the IMF and World Bank. This study argues that NEEDS policy document is not adequate enough as a reform programme for Nigeria, instead of ameliorating it rather worsen poverty situation in Nigeria. It is the position of this work that NEEDS as an offshoot of SAP and essentially, shares its objective and strategies for achieving macroeconomic stability and economic growth. It therefore argues that the road to economic El Dorado and development in Nigeria is still faced with monstrous hurdles. Equally, the researcher adopted system theory as the main theoretical base of the study to assess NEEDS achievements and challenges in Nigeria. This enables the study to further confirm that failure of previous attempts at poverty alleviation and economic reform policies largely contributed towards hiking the tempo of poverty thereby rendering the poor vulnerable in Nigeria. Thus the study recommends that Nigeria should learn from the Asian Tigers by adopting and designing a manual for Nigeria’s economic emancipation, there by taking into consideration domestic factors as pillars for sustainable economic and poverty alleviation policies for critical and realistic development.