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Abstract
This article addresses one of the fundamental questions facing Nigeria at 50, as it relates to the role of the petroleum industry in the nation's development crisis. The relationship between the petroleum industry and Nigeria's development is approached from two levels – the nature of the global political economy of oil and the ways the Nigerian oil industry has served foreign and domestic elite interests. This explains why the transfer of ownership of the petroleum industry in the 1970s did not result in the transfer of control, nor address the structural deficiencies in the industry. Petroleum has been ‘instrumentalised’ in the high-stake politics and struggles involving transnational and local social forces, contributing to multiple crises. However, it is noted that the prospects of an oil-driven national developmental project cannot be entirely foreclosed, but it would require a new equitable social contract, a visionary leadership and a democratic developmental state.