Righting the Resource Curse: Institutional Politics and State Capabilities in Edo State, Nigeria

Abstract

The poor record of liberal reforms sponsored by the international community in postcolonial settings underscores the real politik of institutional change. What we call a ‘new normal’ in development policy and practice foregrounds the role of agency – leadership, networks of connectors and convenors, entrepreneurs and activists – but it has less to say about the political and economic conditions of possibility in which agents operate. The putative powers of agency seem most challenged in contexts of extreme resource dependency and the resource curse. The particular case of Edo, a state in the oil rich Niger delta region of Nigeria, illustrates the intersection of agency and structural conditions to show how ‘asymmetric capabilities’ can emerge to create, constrain and make possible particular reform options.

Acknowledgement

Doug Porter ([email protected]) and Michael Watts ([email protected]) acknowledge the support of Caroline Sage, Debbie Isser and Kathy Bain (World Bank), Zack Brisson (ReBoot), Musharraf Cyan (Georgia State University) and of Peter Lewis (Johns Hopkins University). We are especially grateful to Ukoha Ukiwo (DFID, Abuja) for his work on Edo State and to the participants at a Workshop on 6–7 May 2013 on the Political Economy of Nigerian Governance held in Abuja. The usual disclaimers apply.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. A special report by The Economist is devoted to new models of ‘state capitalism’ appearing in emerging markets (The Economist, 13 August 2013).

2. We are aware that in the wake of the ‘rebasing’ of the Nigeria national accounts data there is a debate over numbers, poverty rates, human development trends and so on (see World Bank, 2014). The fact remains that unemployment is massively underestimated while the aggregate picture of income and human developmental indices of poverty during the period of oil led development has been disastrous. The total poverty headcount rose from 27.2 per cent in 1980 to 65.6 per cent in 1996 and recent figures from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) show that, between 1980 and 2000, the share of the population subsisting on less than one dollar a day grew from 36 per cent to more than 70 per cent (from 19 million to a staggering 90 million people). In half of Nigeria’s 36 states, the estimated poverty headcount (and indices of multidimensional poverty) increased between 2004 and 2010; in some northern states the figure is close to 80 per cent.

3. Ajakaiyi et al. (2011, pp. 254–256) do acknowledge subnational variation and provide vignettes to contrast the key elements of fiscal governance in Cross Rivers and Akwa Ibom, two oil producing states in the delta region, and Kano and Lagos, both major city states in Nigeria over the 1970–2003 period. Their purpose is to show how in some cases decision-takers deviated from national patterns, where others reproduced practices that characterised the entire society. Our modest next step in this paper is to cast some light on the ‘why’ and ‘how’ deviation occurred in the Edo case.

4. A lively scholarly literature is debating the impact of infrastructure spending on political competition and conflict (see the review by Voth & Voigtlander, 2014).

5. See, http://www.thenationonlineng.net/2011/index.php/saturday-magazine/people-politics/26779-%E2%80%98why-edo-people-want-oshiomhole-to-return-in-2012%E2%80%99.html

6. This section draws heavily for data and conclusions on Porter, Cyan, Lee, and Brisson (2014).