The Deepening Crisis of the Nigerian National Bourgeoisie

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Periodical article

Title:	The Deepening Crisis of the Nigerian National Bourgeoisie
Author:	Osoba, Segun O.
Year:	1978
Periodical:	Review of African Political Economy
Volume:	5
Issue:	13
Period:	May-August
Pages:	63-77
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Nigeria
Subjects:	bourgeoisie Economics and Trade
External link:	https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03056247808703374
Abstract:	Nigeria's bourgeoisie has always operated as a junior partner, to British colonial authorities and commercial firms before independence, and to the imperial powers and their transnational corporations since then. The bourgeoisie is unable to create a relatively autonomous domestic capitalist order because of the structure of the world imperialist economy and the profitability of the Nigerian bourgeoisie's role as commission agents within it. In turn this generates contradictions within the bourgeoisie, exemplified by its need to unite as a national class, and its fragmentation into competing groups, as shown by the politics of state creation and by the manipulation of religion. It also generates contradictions between the bourgeoisie and the masses, contradictions which have undermined the authority of successive Nigerian rulers and explain the inability of successive bourgeois regimes. The author calls for the overthrow of the 'national' bourgeoisie and, to that end, the creation of a people's revolutionary culture and organisation. Notes, ref.