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Introduction

Why are we what we are? Third world!

There are two broad competiting paradigms or models of theoretical understanding that seek to explain why some countries are poor and other are wealthy, why some are “first world” and others” Third world”. These broad competiting paradigms are theory of “modernization” and the theory of “imperialism”. Each paradigms has its own “clue concepts” or key explanatory categories” (Hagen 1962).

For modernist theorists the determinant of the social economic situation of any country is the concept of “modern” and its permutation and big categories such as “institutional differentiation” “development” “development”, “nation building”, “economic growth” “advanced industrial societies”, “Westernized” , “backward”, “primitive”, “tribalized” and many more.

On the other hand, those who employ the theory of imperialism have as their concepts such terms as “dependence”, “colonialism”, “liberation”, “Exploitation”, “late capitalist societies” or “societies in the stage of monopoly capitalism”.

The backbone of the theory of modernization has been derived from a convergence of sources in the social sciences in the western societies over a long period of time.

What modernization theorists most often end up with is ethnocentric piratical recipes which admonish the poor societies to imitate them all the way and they would acquire a sudden leap into the 21st century. In order words, join the Calvinistic cruet and you will experience a sudden leap into modernity.

The theory of imperialism on the other hand derives its concepts from Marxist sources. In a nut shell, the wealth and poverty of nations result from the global process of exploitation. This is the situation that Andre Gunder Frank (1969) refers to as the “the development of under development”.

The problem of the poor countries with particular reference to Nigeria is not the lack of technological know how, cultural traits conducive for development, or modern institutions, as is touted by modernists theorists, but that they have been subjected to the exploitation of the international capitalist system and its special imperialist agents, both domestic and alien.

The fundamental conceptual instrumentarium of the critique of imperialism is provided in lenin’s theory of imperialism.

“Imperialism: the highest stage of “capitalism” (1916). The basic pronouncement in the book seems to be that the evils associated with foreign capitalist penetration of the poor countries are the necessary concomitants of capitalism in its present stage.

Nevertheless modernization theorists have also continued to argue that the present influence of the west is not the result of their exploitation of the third world countries. They state that this particular argument gives the poor societies” a moral legitimacy” to demand aid or trade concessions. Sort of “reparation” from their alleged exploiters. However the agree that rich countries depend on poor ones for certain raw materials but that this dependency is declining, and that a great decline in this dependence is expected in view of technology innovations and search for alternative resources nearer home.

Whatever may be the case the fact remains that the fattest profits for developed countries come from their overseas investments. Offiong (1980) argues that it would be wrong to say that the industrialized nations will decrease their dependence on raw materials on the third world nations.

“They will continue to maintain a global policy designed to protect the sources of their crucial raw materials and markets for their finished products”.