MANAGEMENT OF EXTERNAL ECONOMIC RELATIONS AND THE CRISIS OF DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA (Published)
The Post-cold War international regime has accentuated the convergence of sovereign states as a desideratum for their continued relevance within the locus of contemporary global political economy. Hence, the relative gains derived by a particular state are largely dependent on the structure, content and effective implementation of its economic diplomacy. Nigeria’s economic diplomacy is fundamentally aimed at the diversification of its economic base, expansion of its international market, attraction of foreign capital and the management of debt. Essentially, this paper examined how Nigeria’s economic diplomatic engagements had engendered or otherwise undermined its development imperatives. Using the qualitative descriptive method of data analysis, the paper implicated the management of Nigeria’s external economic relations on the prevailing crisis of development within the country. Consequently, it recommended the active involvement of relevant bodies especially the Federal Ministry of Trade, Industry and Investment, Ministry of National Planning, the National Planning Commission and the Debt Management Office in the formulation and implementation of appropriate domestic policies that would make both manufactured and semi-manufactured products more competitive in the global market; making the economy more attractive to local investors first as the most effective strategy for attracting foreign capital; and the efficient management of debt in order to ensure national development.
Keywords: Debt Management, External Economic Relations, Foreign Capital, Foreign Trade, National Development
Richard Cantillon’s Ideologies and its Implications for Economic Development in Nigeria (Published)
This paper examines and ascertains how the contributions of Richard Cantillon have been relevant to the development of the Nigerian economy. In doing this, the economic thoughts of Richard Cantillon were critically examined in order to see how these issues raised have been affecting the Nigerian economy. Political economy and descriptive approaches were used to x-ray the relevance of Richard Cantillon’s contributions to Nigeria’s development. His contributions among others include: the nature of wealth, social and economic organization of people, wages of labour, theory of values, population problems and the use of gold and silver, barter, prices, circulation of money, interest, foreign trade, foreign exchange and banking and credit. The findings of the study revealed that these contributions are of great relevance to economic development in generally, but have not specifically contributed to the development of Nigerian economy. This is seen in the areas of low per capita income, negative attitude to work, inevitable population problems, persistent increase in prices, high lending interest rate, unfavourable terms of trade, incessant and diversion of public funds into private business rather than the real economy, and without doubt Nigeria has no place in foreign trade. Based on the foregoing, it was concluded that all these ugly trends accounted for the reason why economic development is not at sight in Nigeria. Thus, it was recommended that the monetary authorities should initiate sound monetary policies. Also, these monetary policies should be complemented with effective fiscal policies in order to put the Nigerian economy back to path of economic growth and development.
Keywords: Economic Development, Exchange Rate, Fiscal Policies, Foreign Trade, Interest Rate, Monetary Policies, Money Supply, Wages of Labour