The Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decrees (1972 and 1977) and indigenisation in Nigeria
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Abstract
The thesis is a comprehensive examination of the Nigerian
Enterprises Promotion Decrees of 1972 and 1977, and more broadly
of the process of indigenisation in Nigeria.
A brief introduction to the historical background of indigenisation
before 1970 is followed by an account of the timing of the Decrees
in the context of the oil boom in the country's economy. An
examination of the problems encountered in implementing the Decrees
and their effects, and an analysis of the distribution of benefits,
is informed by empirical research including interviews, carried out
by the author in Nigeria between 1982 and 1985.
The record shows that indigenisation has led to the consolidation
of an economy which accommodates the interests of ex-State personnel,
the State as an institution, private indigenous businessmen and
foreign capital, in an order which is far from certain to bring about
the national economic independence which, in official terms, is the
chief objective.
Nigeria's commitment to capitalism and the promotion of
Indigenous private enterprise, on the basis of resources generated
initially by the agricultural economy, between the 1940s and 1960s,
and then much more spectacularly and more significantly by oil
revenues in the 1970s, provides an instructive example of the limits
to what a post-colonial society in black Africa can achieve by trying
to indigenise the ownership structure of its economy