Abstract:
This paper documents Nigeria’s economic development experience over the period 1914 – 2014. The paper shows that the economy has metamorphosed from Agro economy to oil economy. We find that agricultural sector contributed over 60% of the GDP in the 1960s. Despite the reliance of Nigerian peasant farmers on traditional tools and indigenous farming methods, they produced 70% of Nigeria's exports and 95% of its food needs. Again, the economymoved from export producing economy to import consuming economy with little or no evidence of further paradigm shift. This paper evaluates the various development policies in Nigeria and the socio- economic effects of these major economic developmental programmes such as inward-outward looking programme, indigenization programme, and structural adjustment programme up till the vision 20: 2020 programme. The paper asserts that Nigeria, though over a
century old now, has witnessed slow pace of economic development and had been hindered by years of colonization, military rule, corruption, political interest (ethnicity, militancy, and insurgency) and mismanagement. Nonetheless, her achievements include being the 12th largest producer of petroleum in the world. Nigeria also has a wide array of underexploited mineral resources which include natural gas, coal, bauxite, gold, tin, iron ore, limestone, lead and zinc. However, the paper concludes that the slow pace in development is neither lack of planning nor inadequate planning, but
that political expediency usually overrides economic rationality in her development programme implementations.
