| | For the purpose of this review the whole book will be assessed under three headings - descriptive, comparative and evaluative. This follows the categories used by the author himself. His main task in writing the book was 'to trace and analyse critically the development of industrial relations in Nigeria and specifically to determine what system has developed in Nigeria and to evaluate its prospects' (p.xvii). He achieves this, to a large extent, by describing the evolution of an 'integrative' industrial relations system in Nigeria from its inception in the British imposed voluntary system, in which the main actors, employers and employees, were 'free' from government intervention to bargain over wages and other conditions of employment. But as this alien 'Anglo-Saxon' model never really worked in Nigeria, the government formally decided in 1975 on a new labour policy which gave up the role of the State as a referee and sought instead to become an active ... partner-in-progress" for the development of our country' . The author compares this new 'partnership' approach with similar models elsewhere, especially 'co-determination' in West Germany which he contrasts with the totalitarian State controlled communist model of the USSR and finally the hybrid models (with elements of both voluntarism and State control) forged in most developing countries. |
