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Abstract

Abstract: Over the last 30 years, the logic of market liberalization has increasingly permeated the social and economic facets of political and economic discourse to such an extent that the core values about the responsibilities and obligations of nation-states to their citizens have been strained. The welfarist ethos featuring in the public fi nance of some European and North American countries for much of the twentieth century included values such as equity and access, which manifested in the subsidization and aff ordability of social amenities. The welfarist concept, premised on the experience of western European economies, was based on the logic that if a large proportion of the population could not aff ord clean water, health care, or education for their children, long-term corporate interests of the society would be undermined. State-subsidized provision of these essentials was thus fully embraced because of the understanding of the short and long-term public interest involved. However, by the 1980s, changes in international markets fostered a precipitous decline in African economies. Many governments thus jett isoned its state-centered economic strategy since it could no longer fund public expenditure on sustainable basis. Nowhere was the shift in economic policy more pronounced as in Nigeria. The drastic decline in national revenue due to a dip in international price of oil led to Nigeria’s balance of payment defi cit making the introduction of forced neoliberal economic policy inevitable. Analyzing the dynamics of policy formulation and implementation since the 1980s, this article argues that Nigeria’s uncritical embrace of Western-styled neoliberal economic policy largely undermined the country’s quest for a sustainable economic development.

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