This edition of Nigeria Policy Watch deep dives into one of the most important unanswered questions in Nigeria's economic history: how did a country whose manufacturing sector once accounted for more than one-fifth of GDP end up with factories contributing barely 8 percent of national output today?
In the early 1980s, industrial estates expanded across Lagos, Kaduna, Kano and Aba. Textile mills employed thousands. Vehicle assembly plants rolled out Peugeot, Volkswagen and Leyland models. Policymakers believed industrialisation was the surest
