Abstract:
Abstract
The growing gap between the developed and developing countries has led to
constant flow of foreign assistance from developed countries to developing
countries to help them to overcome their development challenges.
According to Easterly, (2006) the West–developed countries have spent over $
600 billion on aid to Africa which Nigeria also benefited from. Despite this flow
into the country, poverty still looms large and underdevelopment persists; just
as there is still continuous and a seemly unending debate on the effectiveness of
aid on development. This paper examined the politics of foreign aid and the
development debate in Nigeria. This objective was accomplished via the
utilization of secondary data sourced majorly from journals – national and
international, textbooks among others. The paper is strictly an evaluative research,
analyzed from the platform of soft power, and soft governance perspective. The study
found that foreign aid has not critically addressed development challenges in
Nigeria using development indicators like poverty and unemployment among
others as a measuring rod; though the international community still insist on
increasing the volume of development aid to developing countries like Nigeria. As
such this paper recommends that the Nigerian government should negotiate foreign aid
with the potential of addressing critical development challenges of its citizens
and direct aid to critical sectors in other to explore the potential of foreign aid to
Nigeria's development.
