Industrialization and Economic Development in A Multicultural Milieu: Lessons for Nigeria

Abstract

While the multicultural structure of Nigeria is seen as a curse rather than a blessing, this paper contends otherwise. It relates multiculturalism to the very subject of industrialisation which has eluded our national economy for decades since independence. Its main thesis is that for Nigeria to develop industrially, it must indigenise technology contemporaneously with the pursuit of foreign direct investment inflow, as well as other conventional policy instruments. The indigenisation of technology must proceed from the comparative industrial strengths of the various multicultural groups in Nigeria. The government must re-learn the lost industrial lessons of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970) and also pursue the path of fiscal federalism but moderated by a fair design of central redistribution mechanism of the oil revenue needs in order to avoid “immiserizing growth”. Thus, Nigeria’s multicultural milieu provides the credentials and seeds needed to drive the industrialisation process.