ONE SIZE FITS ALL ECONOMIC MANTRA AND IDEOLOGISATION OF DEVELOPMENT IN THE THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES: THE NIGERIAN EXPERIENCE

Abstract

Development over the years has generated heated debates over its deficits in Third World countries in general and Nigeria in particular. For the Western scholars, it was caused by the inability of Third World countries to emulate the footsteps of the West, whereas the Third World scholars posited that it was the exploitative activities of the West that brought about developmental deficits in Third World countries. However, the study interrogated the nexus between economic ideologies and the developmental deficits in Third World countries, with much emphasis on Nigeria. We garnered our data from secondary source through documentary method of data collection and analyzed same with content analysis. Theoretically, the study adopted dependency theory as a fulcrum around which the work revolved. The study found that the motives for projecting economic ideologies are to place the vendors in advantageous position in the social relations of production, which impliedly relegates the recipient countries to developmental deficit and dependency. This is so because players in the global arena need economic expansion, which does not guarantee win-win outcomes. Hence, the paper suggests that the Third World countries in general and Nigeria in particular should adopt neo-mercantilism, which will accord the government some leverages to protect the economy by rendering supports to infant industries, instead of adopting imposed ideologies from the West.