In the Western discourse on non-European, particularly African, states, modernisation simply means transforming those states along the standards of Western societies, although it has been well established in contemporary social science scholarship that modernisation is in fact a generic term with several faces. Dibua's book illustrates the trajectory of political, economic and technological development of Nigeria from its colonial past to now, in the context of the Western paradigms that have become the touchstone by which to test and define development in Africa. Post-independence Nigeria, like other African nation states, was caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of development economists who advocated state control, and political developmentalists, the proponents of society-driven approach to economic progression. Neither group appeared to have worked for the real interests of Nigeria.
Dibua discusses the socio-political and economic realities of Nigeria from colonialism to independence: its attempts at democratic governance at the instance of the military until 1999; its efforts at agricultural transformations before and after the discovery of oil, the ‘black gold’ which ultimately transformed into resource curse; the economic crises of the 1980s which stimulated the adoption, grosso modo, of the IMF and World Bank Structural Adjustment Programme; and the roles and contributions of youth, especially students, and women groups in confronting the political and economic morass generated by the debilitating effects of unpleasant government policies. The concluding chapter proposes the indigenisation of African development paradigm such that the roles of the state, culture and local NGOs would be more definitive in the sustained attempt at overcoming the crisis of development in Africa in general, and Nigeria in particular.
African peculiar and cultural realities had been discounted by advocates for the replication of Western approaches and experiences in political, economic and technological spheres; for Dibua this explains the epic failure of Nigeria in these areas. According to Dibua, ‘new technology’ arising from modernisation promoted large-scale, mechanised, capital-intensive farming which was not in line with local tradition (p. 205). But I do not share the pessimism that Nigeria's latest experiment with civilian rule, which started in 1999, ‘does not hold the prospect for entrenching sustainable democracy in the country’ (p. 132). After all, democracy is a process rather than an event. Nevertheless, the fundamental thesis of this book is brilliantly established: the transplantation, if not the superimposition, of Western modernist policies on Nigeria as in other African countries fostered marginalisation and hindered true development. The Nigerian government, as in many other African countries, reduced and in extreme cases withdrew support for social, financial and public services in the 1980s and 1990s, in line with Western and neo-liberal dictates, and this process benefited the private sector. This was prescribed as a solution to Africa's problems. Dibua shows how this was fundamentally flawed, and disastrous for Nigeria. The economic meltdown which has started to ravage financial institutions in the West, coupled with massive bail outs by Western governments, is probably the strongest evidence of the disfunctionality of the approach often prescribed for Africa. And this is a fundamental principle which Dibua has articulated as a drawback to African, nay, Nigerian development. By all account, this book offers a detailed interrogation of the role of modernisation in Nigeria's development trajectory in the social, economic and political spheres.
