Neo-Liberalism On Its Knees: Posing Alternative Development Constructs For Nigeria

The integration of the Nigerian state into the international capitalist system became concretized through the neo-liberal paradigm. The adoption of structural adjustment program by the states in the global south including Nigeria was signpost of the sustained control of the core capitalist states and international financial institutions in the peripheral states. The Babangida administration adopted the structural adjustment in 1986 thereby signifying the decline of the state and ascendancy of the market. This policy, however, undermined the legitimacy of the state and it reduced its capacity for social delivery. The implementation of neo-liberal reforms socially dislocated and alienated the vulnerable social categories thus eliciting protests of the mass organizations, students' movement, working people, intellectual class, urban poor and rural peasants. The neo-liberal policy as a result of its inherent contradictions felt on its knees and it became subject of criticisms, caricature, rejection and repudiation by the people it ought to serve. It became imperative, therefore, to pose alternative development constructs to neo-liberal policy. This work argues for the reconfiguring of the state as critical player in the development nexus within the context of the capable and developmental state.