ANALYSIS OF AID AND LOAN AS DEVELPOMENT OPTION BY THE NIGERIAN STATE

Abstract

Improvement in the structures and living standards of citizens of the world have been a concern to development scholars and experts for a long time and so several nations, institutions and groups have tried to contribute to the well being of many via several and varied options. The history of Nigeria shows that she has experienced different governance patterns, ranging from colonial, military and democratic; and as such this work examines how the Nigerian state utilised the different development packages accessed from both international and national agencies to influence the development of the people and the nation at large. Therefore, content analysis is utilised as the source of data collection, and it proposes that the more aid and loans a nation collects from both international and national agencies, the more the people and nation are impoverished. This work shows that aid and loan are negotiated and managed by relevant government institutions charged with the responsibility of overseeing how the available resources are allocated and distributed for the good of the majority of the people. It discovered that this type of development option is associated with some conditions and that such conditionality is a bane to development rather than a spur. It therefore uses political economy approach to explain why the development of the nation is an exposé of how the nature of those who occupy political positions in a nation is a reflection of the character of the state and therefore recommends that pragmatic leadership is sinequanon to good governance.