DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2023.v11i10.002

Pages: 265-270

Nigeria is the largest economy in Africa, but it suffers from resource curse or Dutch disease where she is unable to leverage on her resource endowments to diversify into many other sectors of the economy. Her industrial capacity is very low due to infrastructure shortage. But the foregoing are motivated by rent-seeking and vested political power holders who rather will support implementing import-dependent policies. Consequently, it is difficult to adopt the latest technology and liberalize the economy for inclusive participation of the citizenry. Utilizing the New Institutional Economic (NIE) perspective, secondary sources of information and content analysis, the paper ascertained that protectionist policies of protecting nascent industries have not worked for Nigeria. For instance, closing the borders to protect local rice producers rather caused rice price volatility and inflation among others. Hence recommends a radical revolutionary change in the political economy will necessitate the needed reforms. All emerging economies in Asia passed through this stage of development.