CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The early 1980s drove home a truth which had been emerging in the 1970s that the world economy was becoming increasingly unstable. The combined effects of the second oil shock, an associated recession in OECD countries, a prolonged slump in real commodity prices, the outbreak of debt crisis with all its consequences for developing economies access to world saving and the erosion by non-tariff barriers of previous trade liberalization put the balance of payment of many developing countries under great strain making imperative decisive policy responses (Killick 1995). On the economic scene of Nigeria, ‘the oil boom(1973-74) affected not only the investment, production and consumption patterns of the country but also its socio-cultural valves, political aspirations, style of economic management and policies and programmes implemented (Olaniyan 1996).
