Neo-Liberal Siege Against Nigeria

Book Title: Neo Liberal Siege Against Nigeria

Written By: Omotoye Olorode

Broadly, the entire book, apart from this preface, can be divided
into three parts of rather uneven lengths—Chapter 1; Chapters 2-
8; and Chapters 9-10. The main part (Chapters 2-8) is our response
to, and critique of, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala’s Reforming the Unreformable
which is an explication and justification of what we call the
“Neoliberal Siege on Nigeria”. Chapter 9 addresses the character
of the proprietors of Neoliberalism in Nigeria and the political
coalitions that have supervised the “Siege”, their complexion and
the complexities of their economic and social interests. Chapter 1
is a 2016 Conference paper that encapsulates the history of, and
analyses the forces that anchor, neo-liberalism in Nigeria in the
last four decades or so. Chapter 10 reviews the nature and
limitations of the resistance against neo-liberalism and the
prospects of the eventual triumph of its victims and tentative
thoughts on the required organisational issues.

About the Author
Omotoye Olorode grew up in Ogbomoso (South Western Nigeria) of the 1940s and early
1950s where he was fully exposed to rural and urban life and culture of colonial Nigeria.
Consequently, he lived and witnessed the continuities and contradictions of the transition
from colonialism to neo-colonialism in Nigeria.
He completed a B.Sc. (Botany) degree at the University of Ife in 1967 and a Ph.D. (Botany) at
the University of Kansas (USA) in 1970. He actually started his undergraduate training in
Botany at University of Nigeria, Nsukka in September 1963. He returned to the University of
Ife in 1970 where he taught and researched in Flowering Plants Taxonomy, Cytogenetics
and Evolution until retirement in 2008. In between, he has worked and participated in ASUU
activities at Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi, Adekunle Ajasin University
Akungba, University of Abuja and Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye. At the
University of Ife, he was part of the radical intellectual movement with the historian (Dr.
Segun Osoba) and others in the Ife Dialogue Committee that published Ife Dialogue
and later the Socialist Forum Collective (SFC) that published Socialist Forum.
Along with others, Omotoye Olorode had been active in the popular struggles against IMF/
World Bank Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) and its varieties since the 1970’s
under Nigeria’s succession of neo-colonial regimes. He has always been active in the
Nigerian Labour movement and especially in the Academic Staff Union of Universities. He
has read and written widely in the general areas of political economy and social history.