ABSTRACT
The most crucial challenge of nationhood which confronts Nigeria is how to transit
from the state of mere ground rent collector from transnational oil companies who
dominate the nation‟s extractive industry, to a modern State economy in which there
is a reciprocal linkage between the extractive industry and the non-extractive sectors
of the economy, such as manufacturing and agriculture.
Oil remains the linchpin of the Nigerian economy and since its ascendancy in the 70s
as the major foreign exchange earner, (it contributes about 95 per cent of federally
generated revenue),1 and there has been no significant transformation in the living
standards of Nigerians. There is pervasive mass impoverishment and a total
disconnect between Nigeria‟s stupendous petroleum and gas resources and mass
impoverishment. Nigeria‟s chequered post-colonial history is a classical case of the
paradox of abundance and want, its stupendous oil resources seems to be a curse
rather than a blessing.
The study establishes a causal link between the collapse of the parliamentary system
in Nigeria in 1966 through degeneration and revolutionary ouster; resultant
normlessness; statelessness which has since then characterized its bodypolitik and
abysmal State failure. The unconscionable state of the rule of law, arbitrariness and
very wide latitude for discretion characterizing the Nigerian State results in pervasive
1 The World Bank, World Development Indicators 2008, Washington D.C., World Bank Publications,
corruption pandemic as competing rent-seeking elites are content to control resources
rather than innovate for diversification.
The study implicates the lack of centrality of law and the rentier structure of the
Nigerian petro-State in the colossal market (economic) and State failures
characterizing the Nigerian bodypolitik. The convoluted evolution of the Nigerian
legal order disparages the creation of an environment of formal rational law which
would have diffused and induced a highly predictable and calculable economic
environment in which expectations of all economic actors are not wilfully disparaged
by arbitrary rule.
The macro economic model which derives from the study‟s multi-dimensional
analysis is subsequently invoked in the legal prototype which will drive and catalyse
the far reaching changes which are necessary to diversify the Nigerian economy away
from the dominance of the extractive sector to the non-extractive tradeable real sector.
The legal paradigm constitutes a charter for the efficient husbandry of Nigeria‟s
petroleum resources such that at full depletion, Nigeria would have accumulated
sufficient stock of non-oil capital and assets in the post-oil epoch from which it will
earn continuous stream of external receipt from strategic perspective investment of oil
revenue, complemented by a carefully calibrated development of infrastructure.
AREWA, J (2021). Rethinking The Legal Paradigm Of Energy Resource Management In Oil-Based Economies: Nigeria As A Case Study. Afribary. Retrieved from https://tracking.afribary.com/works/rethinking-the-legal-paradigm-of-energy-resource-management-in-oil-based-economies-nigeria-as-a-case-study
AREWA, JOHN "Rethinking The Legal Paradigm Of Energy Resource Management In Oil-Based Economies: Nigeria As A Case Study" Afribary. Afribary, 02 May. 2021, https://tracking.afribary.com/works/rethinking-the-legal-paradigm-of-energy-resource-management-in-oil-based-economies-nigeria-as-a-case-study. Accessed 09 Nov. 2024.
AREWA, JOHN . "Rethinking The Legal Paradigm Of Energy Resource Management In Oil-Based Economies: Nigeria As A Case Study". Afribary, Afribary, 02 May. 2021. Web. 09 Nov. 2024. < https://tracking.afribary.com/works/rethinking-the-legal-paradigm-of-energy-resource-management-in-oil-based-economies-nigeria-as-a-case-study >.
AREWA, JOHN . "Rethinking The Legal Paradigm Of Energy Resource Management In Oil-Based Economies: Nigeria As A Case Study" Afribary (2021). Accessed November 09, 2024. https://tracking.afribary.com/works/rethinking-the-legal-paradigm-of-energy-resource-management-in-oil-based-economies-nigeria-as-a-case-study