THE POLITICS OF FOREIGN AID AND THE DEVELOPMENT DEBATE IN NIGERIA

The growing gap between the developed and developing countries has led to constant flow of foreign assistance from developed countries to developing countries with the aim of helping 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 flows into the country, poverty still loom large and underdevelopment still persist; just as there are 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, soft governance perspective. The study found that, foreign aid has not critically address development challenges in Nigeria using development indicators like poverty and unemployment among others as a measuring rod; though the international community's still insist on increasing the volume of development aid to developing country like Nigeria. As such this paper recommend that Nigerian government should negotiate foreign aid with the potential of addressing critical development challenges of her citizens and direct aid to critical sectors in other to explore the potentials in foreign aid to Nigeria development.