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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Workers in Nigeria's Social Development Experience: A Critique of Current Mythologies
Author:Adesina, Jimi O.ISNI
Year:1991
Periodical:Africa Development: A Quarterly Journal of CODESRIA (ISSN 0850-3907)
Volume:16
Issue:2
Pages:95-119
Language:English
Geographic term:Nigeria
Subjects:working class
labour
Labor and Employment
Economics and Trade
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/43657845
Abstract:By the late 1970s the labour aristocracy thesis, according to which African workers are part of a privileged, consumptionist labour aristocracy or urban elite coalition, had become the basis for policy instruments and by the 1980s it was being used to the explain the African crisis and rationalize the imposition of World Bank/IMF structural adjustment programmes (SAP). The author questions the validity of the labour aristocracy thesis on both conceptual and empirical grounds, basing his argumentation on an examination of the situation of Nigerian workers. Data from various studies indicate that in terms of labour market experience, income distribution, urban poverty, residence and identity, workers in Nigeria do not constitute a political and social collective distinct from 'the urban poor'. Social development indicators such as education, nutritional status and health lead to a similar conclusion. The 1980s has seen a qualitative shift in the nature of poverty in Nigeria and proletarian wage earners have been just as much affected as the rest of the urban poor. The author concludes that central aspects of the World Bank's diagnosis of the African crisis are profoundly flawed. The so-called social dimension of adjustment project fits the Bank's political agenda of 'softening resistance to adjustment', rather than a fundamental readdressing of Africa's development crisis. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in French.
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