| | In 1970 the Nigerian government shifted the focus of its agrarian policies from peasant-produced and state-marketed cash (export) crop production to mechanisation and the concentration of land and food production in the hands of highly subsidised elites - mainly serving retired top military officers, bureaucrats and wealthy business people. It also tried to regulate production through public ownership, indigenisation of foreign enterprises, price, interest and exchange rate controls and the restriction of certain capitals from certain sub-sectors. Contradictorily the government at the same time promoted the importation of large quantities of food. The elite farmers remained few, produced little food, and the welfare of the vast majority of the people was not improved; meanwhile bureaucracies were created and continued to reproduce themselves. By 1986 the government had begun to reverse those policies in compliance with a structural adjustment programme imposed by the IMF/World Bank. Subsidies, price, interest and exchange rate controls and the government's direct involvement in production were reduced or ended. The productivity impact of this shift was also minimal and welfare has suffered. These policy shifts result not from the impact of internal or external forces alone, but rather from a complex interaction between them. |
