Inside Independent Nigeria

This title was first published in 2003.Wolfgang Stolper was one of the first Western economists to serve as an adviser in the government of an independent African country. In 1960 he was brought in by the Nigerian government to help shape Nigeria’s first post-independence development plan. His remarkably candid diaries chronicle his struggles and frustrations with officials, interference, waste and corruption at the heart of a government and unfolds the extraordinary story of his warmth and friendship with a country and its people. Brutally frank, compelling and disarmingly thoughtful, Inside Independent Nigeria brings to light one of the most exceptional documents on post-independence Nigeria, and delivers a fascinating picture of a pivotal era in the development of Western economic planning in Africa. No student or researcher of African political history, economics or development studies will want to be without this utterly riveting book.

This is the edited diary of one of the first Western economists to serve as an adviser in the government of an independent African country. It gives a brutally frank appraisal of Nigeria's then political leaders and the economists, local and foreign, who sought to shape the country's development policies and to write its first Five-Year Development Plan. It anticipates many of the problems that afflicted Nigeria from the mid 1960s on, highlighting statist interference in the economy, corruption and the waste of development resources.