UMOREN, Rose2024-11-222024-11-222001978-029-235-71https://nigeriareposit.nln.gov.ng/handle/20.500.14186/1679In local and international discourse of Nigeria’s political and economic crises, the two are usually treated as mutually exclusive. They are, however, intertwined, as this book shows using the latest political crisis and the two decades old economic crisis. The book challenges the widespread attribution of the 1993-99 political crisis to the annulment by the military of the June 1993 presidential election and the subsequent incarceration to the death of the presumed winner of that election. Instead, it shows that the economic framework at the time midwifed the crisis with election annulment only serving as the trigger. This thesis is anchored on a detailed review of the economic framework in the lead-up to the election: the World Bank International Monetary Fund (IMF) administered Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). The review draws mostly from official data and documents from notably the World Bank IMF, Central Bank ofNigeria and Nigeria’s Federal Office of Statistics covering the SAP period 1986-91. The Nigerian SAP experience is then weighed against successful turnaround strategies of specific developed and developing countries. The findings regarding Nigeria, I believe, could be extrapolated in varying degrees to other African countries, some of which have been implementing SAP since the 1970s. The object of this book is not ideological; hence, literature is drawn from left, right, and centre of the development debate. The object instead is a balanced intervention in the rather unfocused search by Nigeria and other African countries for economic development strategies. This lack of focus has left these countries susceptible to, sometimes faddish, external derived economic strategies promoted by both left and right of the international ideological spectrum. These have included basic needs, trickle down and mixed economy with SAP as the latest. This book was first completed early in 1993. It had to be severally revised over the last eight years to incorporate, as far as relevant, the profound experiences Nigeria has since undergone, including the political crisis that erupted following the election annulment and the restoration of democracy in May 1999. Nonetheless, its crux has remained the review of SAP in Nigeria against some successful economic turnarounds elsewhere in the developing and developed worlds. This book aims for a very wide readership in Nigeria in particular and Africa at large, where SAP has been most widely implemented under the day-to-day supervision of the World Bank as IMF. The goal is to enlighten, so Africans especially can make real choices about their development strategies. For Nigerians, the book is particularly timely as the Obasanjo government begins economic reforms with both left and right-proffering strategies.■ Origins of Debt Distress; ■ A New Strategy Called SAP; ■ Design and Implementation External Support; ■ Impact (I) 93; ■ Impact (II) — Socio-political; ■ Free Market: A Critique Development Case Studies; ■ The Case for, and the Limitations of the MarketenBook