ABSTRACT

Foreign aid inflows in Nigeria have grown significantly in the independence period. Many studies have tried to examine the effectiveness of aid on the socio economic development. While some evaluations have found that in many cases aid does not work, others are ambiguous. This paper assesses the factors for the low impact of foreign aid on socio economic development of Nigeria, 19601985. The result strongly supports the view that foreign aid had but a minimal impact on socioeconomic development of the country during the period under study. This was so due to a series of factors highlighted and discussed in the study.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 PREAMBLE

Aid means various forms of assistance, help, support, patronage, prop

in form of cash or technical advice given by an organization or by a nation to

another or to people in difficult situations. Foreign aid, therefore, is an

international transfer of capital, goods or services from one country to another

for the benefit of the beneficiary nation and her citizens1.

A dominant feature of the relationship between industrial and

developing countries since the 1960s is that of foreign aid. Foreign aid has

been a major source of external finance for the majority of countries in Africa

and Asia since they gained independence.

From a developmental viewpoint, aid was originally conceived in the

postWorld War II environment in the context of a particular development

paradigm where poor countries are characterized by lowincome and are

unable to generate adequate savings to promote capital formation and rapid

socialeconomic growth. In their lowlevel of development, which is

characteristic of most developing countries, low domestic saving has to be

supplemented in form of foreign aids. The general belief in these developing

countries was that capital from developed countries was needed to provide the

necessary support and growth that would make economic takeoff ...Get Complete Material.