The Role of Rational Planning in Economic Development: A Nigerian Example

Abstract

Sponsors of rational planning often assume that successful implementation of planned and directed change is guaranteed. It is a thesis of this paper, however, that such planning may generate instead conditions which can defeat the socio-economic purpose. A comparison of two of the farm settlements currently administered under the Western Nigeria Land Settlement Scheme will show that their divergent patterns of development, which fell outside the framework prescribed and anticipated by the policy makers, were determined largely by the conditions specified for the establishment of their social structure.