Agricultural Policy and Political Governance in Nigeria: Fiscal Sociology and the Challenges of a Rent-Seeking Economy

Abstract

Despite the current financial crisis facing all levels of governments of Nigeria, virtually no efforts have been directed at the sociological analysis of the finances. The situation particularly begs for attention considering the dwindling agricultural status, focusing on cocoa, and the multiple socio-economic, political and cultural distortions embedded in its monolithic source of revenue. The literature is replete with the sociological analysis of pubic financial management. However, those analyses appear to be much more concentrated on the advanced than the developing economies. In this review article, we attempted a public economy discourse of developing economies, focusing on the deleterious interplays between the dominant oil income and agricultural outputs and how the duo has made Nigeria a rentier economy. With a critical review of integrated literature on the sociology of oil politics; the institutional and symbolic element of the tax-dependent economy; and the historical volatility of rentier economies; we critically drew a nexus between the current life-threatening revenue profile of Nigeria and her major, if not solitary, reliance on petrodollar as well as the socio-cultural manifestations. Like this, the essay advanced the significance of fiscal sociology as a veritable tool for constructing a theory about state finances.

DOI: 10.7176/JESD/10-14-08

Publication date:July 31^st 2020