No one would dispute the generalisation that a number of fundamental economic changes took place in West Africa during the period from 1880 to 1914. At the same time, there is also widespread agreement that detailed knowledge of the origin, the course, and the effect of these changes is still lacking. This thesis attempts to contribute towards an understanding of some of these problems as they appeared in the context of the economic history of Lagos, the capital and principal port of Nigeria. The main emphasis naturally falls on the theme of trade. The commerce of Lagos was geared to an export economy which depended almost entirely on palm produce. The import trade showed more variety, but was also concentrated on two products, namely cotton goods and spirits. Germany attracted the largest share of the export trade by her virtual monopoly of palm kernels, while England dominated the import trade through her supplies of cotton goods. The fortunes of trade as a whole were determined mainly by market trends in Europe; changes in demand altered the price of produce and affected purchasing power in west Africa, thus establishing a cyclical pattern of booms and slumps. On the basis of this outline of the economy, it is possible to distinguish three main periods between 1880 and 19140 In the 1880's falling produce prices and reduced profit margins signalled the advent of a severe depression. From the 1890's until after the turn of the century, there was a period of fluctuating trade, during which time prices failed to make any significant recovery, and prosperity depended on short-term booms based on the exploitation of newly discovered rubber and timber resources. From 1906 to 1914 there was a period of prosperity marked by the revival of produce prices and by a large increase in the volume of trade. Within this framework there is room for detailed treatment of four important topics. In the first place, there is a re-assessment of the causes of imperialism in West Africa, and an examination of government economic policy during Joseph Chamberlain's tenure of the Colonial Office. Secondly, an attempt is made to analyse the far reaching changes which occurred in currency and banking. Thirdly, there is a survey of the developments which took place in transport. Finally, throughout this thesis great emphasis is placed on the study of the merchant group, and particularly on the fortunes of the African merchants.

There is increasing inflows of FDI into developing economies; yet, systematic studies on determinants of FDI in developing economies are scarce. Against this backdrop, this study examined three key issues nan1ely; the role of government, the impact of institutions and macroeconomic factors on inward FDI in Nigeria. The study used annual data collected from CBN, UNCTAD, World Bank and PRS group. To achieve the first objective, the study grouped the government investment policy changes adopted over the period 1962- 2012 into three major phases: limited promotion (1962- 1969), restrictive practice (1970-1985) and liberal policies and reform phases (1986- 2012). Impact and implications of government foreign investment policies on trends of FDI inflows into Nigeria was examined using trend analysis. The study found that annual growth rate of total inward FDI was highest during the liberal policy and reform phase, and was least during the restrictive practice phase. The study also found that annual growth rate of inward FDI was: higher in the oil sector than in the non-oil sector during the SAP era (1986-1994), higher in the non-oil sector than in the oil sector after NIPC reform (1995- 2012), and annual growth rate of total inward FDI was higher during the SAP era (1986- 1994) than after the NIPC reform (1995- 201 2). The study used CCR and FMOLS regressions models to analyse the second and third objectives and showed that political instability, easing bureaucratic impediments, democratic accountability, government expenditure, trade openness and market size had positive and significant impact on inward FDI in Nigeria. Finding on interest rate was inconclusive and exchange rates have negative and significant impact on inward FDI in Nigeria. However, high inflation has a negative and insignificant impact on inward FDI while investment risks have positive and insignificant impact on inward FDI in Nigeria.

This thesis uses the political economy approach to examine the relative failure of federalism in post-military Nigeria from 1999 to 2009. Nigeria's federal system is shaped by the country's political economy, which predominantly revolves around oil rents. The central featu re of Nigeria's political economy is the convoluted intimacy between oil and the state. Since the oil boom of the earty 19705, oil has been at the heart of Nigeria's fiscal federalism and, by extension, has been central to the practice of federalism. All sectors of the Nigerian rentier state are dependent upon the oil sector and consequently upon the state. This brings to the fore the link beween Nigeria's oil and the country's practice of federalism. Nigeria, being a distributive state, oversees the distribution of oil rents in the country, and the desire to achieve an equitable distribution has often resulted in the adoption of several fiscal principles dictated by a combination of factors, yet the country's fiscal system has continuously defied political and economic logic. The main argument in this thesis is that the Nigerian rentier state's domination of the economy is at the heart of the ethno·regional socio·economic competition for a share of the national wealth, which is the source of the failure of federalism in Nigeria, particularly in the period immediately following the tennination of military rule in 1999. The inability of the Nigerian federal state to distribute Nigeria's oil wealth effectively has become the .main source of the country's fai lure as a federal state, although the coloniaJJegacy of the Nigerian Federation, the country's comptex ethnic diversity, oil resource abundance, ingrained corruption and decades of military rule, have also in combination contributed to this verdict. None of these individual facto rs can be completely ignored when we try to explain this failure, .===b"e"cause they interact in a complicated fashion such that it is difficult to untangle them. The main conclusion in this thesis is that Nigeria's failure to ensure an equitable distribution of oil·generated revenue epitomises the failure of federalism in Nigeria. The Nigerian federal system is largely flawed and is in serious need of some bold political engineering. Our position in this thesis is that these deficiencies are rooted in the country's unbalanced domestic political economy, which promotes over.ctependency on oil and consequently a predatory leadership. A political restructuring of the oil-rich federation in ways that would grant the constituent units some real political and fi scal autonomy would be a useful reform that might ultimately provide a cure to the ai ling federal system.

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Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, has been portrayed in scholarly literature as a prominent case of postcolonial African ‘growth failure’. Between 1960 and 2000 oil reserves were exploited resulting in revenues of more than $300 billion to the Nigerian government, while real per capita income fell over the same period. This thesis, by focusing on building and construction in Nigeria from 1960 to 2000, explains how and why Nigeria failed to invest its oil revenues to create long-term economic growth. Its findings have important implications for investment analyses of other commodity-rich countries in Africa and across the developing world. It draws on a wide range of primary quantitative and qualitative sources including government surveys, construction-related company financial data and project lists, industry publications, newspapers, and the correspondence files of a major Nigerian architecture firm. These are used to present a picture of historical building activity which includes a 40-year dataset of cement price and consumption, and a construction supply curve for both the oil boom and bust periods. By quantifying for the first time the long-observed ‘ghost construction’ of the oil boom, this thesis finds that annually about two thirds of what scholars and national accounts statistics had estimated was being invested in construction was never actually invested, implying that what was invested offered a greater return than has previously been acknowledged. Although investment in construction was overstated during the oil boom, during the oil bust construction was understated as major government projects were funded off-budget and away from public scrutiny. This thesis demonstrates that the most productive area of public investment has been infrastructure, and further that the private sector construction industry was a valuable asset which greatly enhanced the government’s ability to implement investment programmes, when it had the political will to do so.