BANKS PARTICIPATION IN THE INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT OF NIGERIA
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Nigeria since the oil boom in the early 70’s has been a victim of a monolithic economy and since then has been enjoying the so called ‘Petro Naira’ without adequately evolving a sound policy that will keep the nation’s economy in a firm foundation for steady growth. Though the country recognized the importance of Industrialization as far back as 1964, yet when the ‘Petro Naira’ started flowing in, they were blindfolded as to ignore the importance of establishing industries to ensure a diversified economy. Now the ‘Petro Naira’ is no more, and the future outlook is bleak, the need for a diversified economy became the subject matter of many governmental policies and actions. This leads us to one of the ways for solving this problem and that is industrialization.
Apart from ensuring a diversified economy, industrialization also accelerates the industrial development of a country; in fact the basic premise is that if a country wishes to accelerate the overall rate of industrial development, the country must have manufacturing production rising much faster than the overall rate of growth of the G.N.P. and this has to be reflected in an increasingly dominating role of manufacturing industry in the total economy.
Also, industrialization ensures export expansion and import contraction coupled with the fact that it stimulates foreign exchange earnings, international recognition and the provision of employment opportunities for the teeming population.