The Pathological Effects of Petrodollars on Nigerian Political Economy

The petrodollar economy has attributed a lot of controversies in the countries who are heavily relied on oil and gas economy particularly Middle Eastern states and other members of OPEC including Nigeria. This sinister has generated distortion on political economy of petrodollar in Nigerian economic system. This tragedy includes inconsistent political system, weak economic and developmental policies, incorporation of the economy into the vagaries western capitalist through IMF and World Bank, inflation and absence of economic stabilization of economy, neglecting agriculture among others. The content analysis and secondary data was duly adopted in this paper. The study revealed the above effects as the threat or impact to the petrodollar on Nigerian political economy. The neoclassical dependence model and the resource curse theory were employed as the theoretical framework of the study. Meanwhile, this paper recommends that diversification of the economy to cover other sectors in agriculture, mining industry, tourism and local industrialization would aid the economy to meets its challenges and development strategy.

Keywords: Pathological effects, Petro dollar, Oil economy, Nigerian Political economy