Contending Perspectives on Development: A Critical Appraisal

Abstract

There is no doubt that various scholarly studies were carried out on Development in Nigeria; there are still gaps to be filled. This is due to the fact that scholars tend to generally concentrate on the study of aspects of Development and the history of poverty in Nigeria. The paper therefore provided in sight on the gaps left on touched by scholars with a view to proffering space for this work in previous works. Specifically, the paper seeks to give a critical appraisal of theories of development with particular reference to Nigeria. To achieve this, the paper is divided into sections on introduction/ conceptual clarification of the key concept (development), highlights on the types of development. Discussion in this section leads to the spine of the paper which is a critical appraisal of development theories where theories such as (the Functionalist, Marxist, Modernization, Dependency and World system) were critically appraised. The paper is premised on the three fundamental questions asked by Seer in an attempt to assess the level of development of a nation. The questions are: what happened to poverty, what happened to unemployment, what happened to inequality? If these variables are on the decline from high level, then beyond doubt there has been a period of development of the country concerned. But if one or two of these central indicators are going worse, it will be strange to call the result as development even if the national income has developed like in the case of Nigeria. Considering the level of poverty and unemployment and the wide gap between the rich and the poor, one can argue that this assertion is very relevant in an attempt to establish a link between these problems and the level of development in the country. The final section of the paper draw conclusion where attempt was made at suggesting two perspectives as framework for analyzing the developmental plight of Nigeria. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n16p41