Globalization In Nigeria Case Study

e phenomenon of globalization is a multi-dimensional and multifaceted process that encompasses political, economic, social and cultural dimensions. From the perspective of the UNDP National Human Development, “globalization can be defined as a multidimensional process of unprecedented rapid and revolutionary growth in the extensiveness and intensity of interconnections on a truly global scale” (UNDP: National Human Development Report, 2000/2001). Economic historians date the modern era of globalization to approximately 1870, with the period from 1870 to 1914 considered to be the birth of the modern world economy. This first modern stage of globalization was followed by two additional stages, one from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s and another

Through structuralism and the practice of import substitution industrialization, Nigeria planned to revolutionize its economy. The first development finance institution established by the colonial government in Nigeria was the Nigerian Local Development Board (NLDB) in 1946. The first and more important function of the NLDB was to make loans and grants to the government and government-controlled bodies for the purpose of financing the establishment of infrastructure, public utilities, land settlement and land utilization schemes. The second function was to aid and foster private Nigerian business activities by granting loans to cooperatives, partnerships and companies registered in the country. In 1972, the government issued an indigenization decree, the first of a number of Nigerian Enterprises Promotion decrees, that barred aliens from investing in specified enterprises and reserved participation in certain trades to Nigerians. At the time, about 70 percent of commercial firms operating in Nigeria were foreign-owned. This led to the development of the petrochemical plants, the iron, steel, textile, breweries, agriculture and cottage industries, and the establishment of assembly plants that used imported processed materials in the automobile and cement industries .In 1975 the federal government bought 60 percent of the equity in the marketing operations of the major oil companies in Nigeria, but full nationalization was rejected as a means of furthering its program of indigenization. During Nigeria’s first major economic crisis of the oil era in 1982, Nigeria curtailed its imports, invoking a clause of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (a 1947 multilateral trade agreement that lasted until the WTO was formed) that allows a country experiencing balance of