INTRODUCTION

Colonialism is a major feature of the economic history of Nigeria. Britain eventually gained
control of Nigerian administration. After independence, the Nigerian economy seemed very promising.
Many saw Nigeria, with 15% of Africa's population, as an emerging economy. However, this potential
never materialized. A series of unfortunate political and economic events have stalled Nigerian growth.
The country still plays an important economic role in the world, especially as a producer of fossil fuels.

And therefore, in Onwuka N. Njoku’s Introduction to Economic History in the Chapter 7, he

explains globalization as the ever closer interaction among humankind in different regions and
countries of the world, in almost every aspect of life. One view describes it as a process of
internationalizing countries as a result of a convergence of world views, products, ideas and other
aspects of culture. A British sociologist defines it as the "intensification of worldwide social relations
which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many
miles away and vice versa. Another describes it as the world wide movement towards technological,
economic, financial, trade and communications integration.

Globalization is one of the most fascinating phenomena in the modern world, especially on the
19th century. This phenomenon has been gathering rather seemingly unstoppable speed and steam since
World War II on particular. Like all phenomenon of such towering import to human life, it does not
admit a single simple definition. As seen above there have been many definitions as the main
phenomenon as dwelled on internationalization, liberalization, universalization, westernization and
modernization. In 2000 the IMF identified four basic aspects of globalization, namely, trade and
transactions, capital and investment movements, migration and movement of people and dissemination
of knowledge. The concept of globalization is shrinking the world into a global village that involves
spontaneity of interactions as if all nations were next door neighbours. The concept of global village
arises from the squeezing together of time and space by digital technology and other rocket-speed
means of transportation and information.

CONCEPTUAL DEFINITIONS

Globalization: The term globalization means different things to different people. According to the
context of the study globalization is one of the most fascinating phenomenon in the modern world,
especially in the 19th century. Globalization refers to the ever closer interaction among mankind in
different regions and countries of the world, in almost every aspect of life.
Development: On the other hand can be used to describe the process of economic social and political
transformation that is, it expires the act of developing or process of being developed.

HISTORICAL VIEW

Globalization; as we all know it today is not a sudden Eruption rather; it has a history that is
rooted in the past, in fact, the remote past. The phenomenon had passed through various stages or
phases before assuming its current form and meaning.

Historically, globalization is said to manifest its current meaning, in 1970s. Large scale
globalization process, started in the 19th and the early 20th century, when the connectivity of the world
economics and culture grew tremendously. Scholars of obligation have identified three phases in the
history that is rooted in the past, in fact, the remote fast, these are: Archaic globalization presenting
events of earliest civilizations up to 1600, proto – early modern globalization, from early 19th century
to present.

The term archaic globalization include human integrative activities in the forms of trade,
information and which began with the earliest civilizations, notably the Hellenistic Age (323BC --
331BC), the Roman era (753BC -27 BC), the Han Dynasty in China (26BC-220 AD), the Islamic
Golden (8th -14th Century). The golden Age of Islam, witnessed effective developments in sciences,
economic affairs and cultural works, and from which ‘Primitive’ Europe benefitted, especially by way
of spread of crops and livestock, technology and culture. The pre-modern age allows the rise and
domination of European Maritime Empires, discovering of USA (New World) from the sea journey of
Christopher Columbus in 1492 and the subsequently journey by Portuguese and Dutch sailors reached
the far east (1506) it marked the beginning of the Seaborne trade. The momentum of opening up trade
with the eastern world continued to speed as a result of two trade opium wars (1839-1842 and 1856-
1360). Following the wars, china coded Hong Kong Island and also made diplomatic and commercial
concessions to Britain.

The phenomenon as divided by academic literature views in three major areas; economic,
political and cultural globalization. Economic globalization refers to the emergence of an international
network of economic systems and it encompasses globalization of production, finance, markets,
technologies, institutions, corporations and labour. National economies also depend on it globally
which also includes rapid increase in cross border movements of goods, services, labour, technology
and capital.
 While cultural globalization is meant the transmission and exchange of ideas and values
globally in a way that intensifies and extends social relations. This exchanges deals with religion,
lifestyles, languages, games and fashion trends. It is against this backdrop that sociologists perceive
globalization as a process by which people of the world are incorporated into a single society; the
global village.

Political globalization refers to increasing tendency towards multilateral political arrangements

which conduce to the emergence of transnational state even non-state apparatuses and towards the birth
of national and international organizations with global responsibilities. They serve as watchdogs over
interactions between nations- state governments.

Historically the beginning of globalization has been the subject of stimulating debate which
mirrors the disciplinary and ideological orientations of the pundits. Some scholars think its beginnings
are rooted in distant past even in prehistoric times .some others see it as something of few decades ago.
The term globalize is said to be of relatively recent and its current meaning was established in the
1970s. Large scale globalization began in 19th century to early 20th century.

GLOBALIZATION AND AFRICA

The African continent has had contact with the outside world for many centuries, in the process
of which, over time, it got gradually incorporated into the emerging world system. India and Chinese
vessels were visiting the East African coast centuries before the Portuguese arrived Africa. The
perspective of globalization in Africa, the contact with Europe which the Portuguese initiated marked
the genesis of systematic incorporation of the continent especially in sub-Saharan Africa, into the
European capitalist economic system. Globalization, as stated earlier, is a raging octopus with
penetrating global reach. No doubt globalization may have created more wealth and may have
globalized modern technology, symbolically in some respects. In Africa most of the leaders are
apprehensive of globalization, though few have mustered enough courage or effective where withal to
oppose its implementation.

Some pundits, like Celestous Juma, assert categorically that "Globalization as we know it has
failed in Africa". Under the so called structural adjustment programs (SAP), most local industries were
unable to compete with multi-national corporations and this led to them folding up ,such textile
industries were in Nigeria , Malawi , Tanzania ,Mozambique . Statistically it is frightening against
globalization in Africa, the number of destitute persons earning less than US$1 a day rose from
241million in 1980 to 329million in 2000. Africa has been at the periphery of global economy since
independence.
NIGERIA DURING THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE

Direct trade with Europe started from the fifteenth century. Portuguese had explored the coasts
to avoid Saharan intermediaries in the trade of West African gold to Europe and that was a way to
India. They built coastal bases and introduced the Atlantic slave trade when they bought captives from
the kingdom of Benin (nowadays Nigeria) and sold them to African tradesmen on the coast (nowadays
Ghana).

The period from 1680-1800 was dominated by a boom of the Atlantic slave trade because of the
growth of the Atlantic plantation system. The effects on peaceful production and trade were terrible
since slave trade was a cause of conflicts. However, the Atlantic trade still brought advantages.
Especially, the currencies that West African tradesmen adopted were more efficient than earlier
commodity currencies. This helped to reduce the cost of doing busines.

HISTORY OF TAX IN NIGERIA

The European struggle to establish communities and trading posts on the West African coast
from about the mid-17th century to the mid-18th century was part of the wider competition for trade
and empire in the Atlantic. The British, like other newcomers to the slave trade, found they could
compete with the Dutch in West Africa only by forming national trading companies. The first such
effective English enterprise was the Company of the Royal Adventurers, chartered in 1660 and
succeeded in 1672 by the Royal African Company. Only a monopoly company could afford to build
and maintain the forts considered essential to hold stocks of slaves and trade goods. In the early 18th
century, Britain and France made inroads on the Dutch hold on West African trade; and by the end of
the French Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic Wars (1799–1815), Britain had become the
dominant commercial power in West Africa.

The slave trade was one of the major causes of the devastating internecine strife in southern
Nigeria during the three centuries to the mid-19th century, when abolition occurred. In the 19th
century, Britain was interested primarily in opening markets for its manufactured goods in West Africa
and expanding commerce in palm oil. Securing the oil and ivory trade required that Britain usurp the
power of coastal chiefs in what became Nigeria.

That was an unplanned consequence of the creation of the Sokoto Caliphate in 1804. At its
peak, the Sokoto Caliphate was the most populous state in Africa. The Caliphate occupied most of
north-central and north-west Nigeria, as well as parts of neighboring countries of nowadays Nigeria.
Internal peace and market integration was a basis of the commercial prosperity of the Caliphate. Hausa
merchant diasporas ran an extensive export-trade network and the state had regular increase of the
labour supply through the importation of “pagan” captives as slaves. Many cities became bigger,
especially, its commercial capital Kano, which was the biggest manufacturing center in the region. The
clothing was exported from Kano to all over West Africa. The formation of the Sokoto Caliphate made
Islam a mass rural religion for the first time in the region. The Caliphate introduced Islamic taxes that
facilitated economic expansion.

Formal "protection" and eventually colonization of Nigeria resulted not only from the desire to
safeguard Britain's expanding trade interests in the Nigerian hinterland, but also from an interest in
forestalling formal claims by other colonial powers, such as France and Germany. By 1850 British
trading interests were concentrating in Lagos and the Niger River delta. British administration in
Nigeria formally began in 1861, when Lagos became a crown colony, a step taken in response to
factors such as the now-illegal activities of slave traders, the disruption of trade by the Yoruba civil
wars, and fears that the French would take over Lagos. Through a series of steps designed to facilitate
trade, by 1906 present-day Niger was under British control.

NATIONAL ECONOMIC INTERESTS IN THE POSTWAR PERIOD

Starting in 1949, when Nigerian's recently emergent labor, commercial, and professional elites
were first consulted by the British as part of a constitutional review, the peoples of Nigeria engaged in
ongoing debate over the pressure of decolonization, independence, and modernization. The two coup
d'états of 1966 and the civil war of 1967-70 reflected economic as well as political elements.

Between 1951 and 1960, the major political parties played leading roles in unifying and locally
mobilizing the economic elite. Elites from majority parties in the regional assemblies who cooperated
with the ruling federal coalition dispensed a wide range of rewards and sanctions, thus retaining their
own positions and power and keeping the masses subordinated. Positions in government services and
public corporations, licenses for market stalls, permits for agricultural export production, rights to
establish enterprises, roads, electrical service, running water, and the governing group allocated
scholarships to its supporters. Each major party was backed by a bank, which assisted in the transfer of
substantial public funds to the party.

At all levels—local and regional after 1951 and federal after 1954—political leaders could use a
range of controls, extending over local councils, district administration, police, and courts, to subdue
any dissident minority, especially in the far north, where clientage was the social adhesive of the
emirate system. Political superiors offered protection, patronage, and economic security in exchange for
loyalty and the obedience of inferiors.
 The elites attracted clients and socially inferior groups not only in the far north, where Islam
legitimized the traditional hierarchy, but even in Igboland, an area of southeastern Nigeria where power
had been widely dispersed before the 20th century. The elites of the three regions preferred to close
ranks to share the fruits of office and to prevent challenges to their positions, but by the time
independence was achieved in 1960, policies designed to enhance the security of one regional elite
threatened the security of others.

1970s-1980s

A major feature of Nigeria's economy in the 1980s, as in the 1970s, was its dependence on
petroleum, which accounted for 87 percent of export receipts and 77 percent of the federal
government's current revenue in 1988.[3] Falling oil output and prices contributed to another
noteworthy aspect of the economy in the 1980s—the decline in per capita real gross national product,
which persisted until oil prices began to rise in 1990. Indeed, GNP per capita per year decreased 4.8
percent from 1980 to 1987, which led in 1989 to Nigeria's classification by the World Bank as a low-
income country (based on 1987 data) for the first time since the annual World Development Report was
instituted in 1978. In 1989 the World Bank also declared Nigeria poor enough to be eligible (along with
countries such as Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Chad, and Mali) for concessional aid from an affiliate, the
International Development Association (IDA).

Another relevant feature of the Nigerian economy was a series of abrupt changes in the
government's share of expenditures. As a percentage of gross domestic product, national government
expenditures rose from 9 percent in 1962 to 44 percent in 1979 but fell to 17 percent in 1988. In the
aftermath of the 1967-70 civil war, Nigeria's government became more centralized. The oil boom of the
1970s provided the tax revenue to strengthen the central government further. Expansion of the
government's share of the economy did little to enhance its political and administrative capacity but did
increase incomes and the number of jobs that the governing elites could distribute to their clients.

The economic collapse in the late 1970s and early 1980s contributed to substantial discontent
and conflict between ethnic communities and nationalities, adding to the political pressure to expel
more than 2 million illegal workers (mostly from Ghana, Niger, Cameroon, and Chad) in early 1983
and May 1985.

In onwuka's conclusion he states that globalization, as currently practiced is therefore not the
answer to Africa’s search for autonomous technological development. There is absolute need for
African states to improve on democratic governance, social infrastructure, especially education with IT
compliancy, and reduce the high tariffs on trade between African countries. Onwuka points at the fact
that if Africa is to become truly a part of globalizing world in its own right, the technological ,
economic ,social and political infrastructure has to be built on a firm and balanced internal footing
before it can be solidified with external linkages.

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Onwuka N. Njoku: Introduction to Economy history. Great AP Express Publishers.

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