AKINWALE Yusuf Opeyemi
This paper investigates the existence of resource curse in Nigeria and examines various challenges that caused it. Some of the issues are economical while others are political such as: high level of corruption, poor level of science and technology policy implementation and infrastructural development, volatilities of price in the oil market, Dutch disease through overreliance on oil revenue, insufficient investment in education, weakly institutionalised states and lack of transparency among others. Some of the factors that are suggested to correct these issues centred round economic development principles such as: economic diversification, technology management, transparency and accountability like Extractive Industries Transparency Iniatives (EITI), natural resource funds, investments in education, domestic private ownerships, public involvement and strong institutions among others. Purposive sampling technique was adopted by distributing questionnaires across the key sectors of the economy and few people were also interviewed. The result of the regressions showed that corruption/weak institution, poor level of technology and Dutch Disease have direct and significant impact on the resource curse in Nigeria while volatility of crude oil price does not have a significant impact on resource curse in Nigeria. However, this paper concluded that most of the solutions suggested in combating resource curse would not be realistic if corruption and weak institutional frameworks as well as poor technological development continue to dominate Nigeria system.
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