According to author Ejiogu even now after the independence period Nigeria still remains unstable due to lack of a stable central government. He goes on to say that it will remain this way because they refuse to recognize "the age-old identities embodied in the ethno-national groups." .
As far as developmental strategies go, I think Nigeria is pursuing the Asian model as described by Snow and Brown. Economic reforms first, political later. The people are for political reform, but not the government. In the past elections candidates would always promise to lead the country back to civilian rule and further away from military rule, however once in power they became so engulfed in the pleasures of being president they either forgot about or did not care about the people's concerns. For example, in 1975 General Murtala Muhammad took control over the state and promised a return to civilian rule. However, in the mid 1970's the new regime made plans to have a new capital built in Abuja, which depleted the national economy (The Columbia Encyclopedia). The government became really focused on economic reforms, after the 1980's when they were being place in a tremendous amount of debt due to the fall in oil revenue. At that point they began to work jointly with the IMF and the World Bank to help get their economy back on track. Like the Asian model predicts, this government used the revenue from the oil production and spent it on the infrastructure of the state instead of the social welfare of the society. Forcing many of the citizens to continue to live in poverty while the rich were getting richer off of the poor. Nigeria has a population estimate of about 127 billion in the year 2000 45 percent of its population is living below the poverty line. .
Nigeria faces many of the barriers for development of second tier states. Nigeria is known to be the most populous state in Africa and the population is steadily increasing.
