286 Book Reviews

The Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) is made up of nine black states clustered north of the white dominated South Africa. Despite the diversity among the nine-a diversity of ideology as well as size and economic development-they are united in trying to strengthen economic and communication links between them for their mutual benefit and to reduce their dependency on South Africa.

This research report, drawn from published sources, is divided into three main parts: first a discussion of the concept of dependence and its application in southern Africa, second a description of the development of SADCC, and third SADCC’s future prospects. The report’s greatest strength is the information and data which it offers, which has been collected from many sources and is presented with great clarity. Inevitably the information dates quickly but this book will remain a valuable source for some time.

Less satisfactory is the rather laboured discussion of the concept of ‘dependence’ and ‘vulnerability’, which is drawn from Keohane and Nye’s Power and Interdependence, and could have been presented in a shorter, crisper way. In looking to the future Arne Tostensen is sometimes torn between, on the one hand, his recognition of the scale of the problems and the size of the resources needed to overcome them, and, on the other, his obvious sympathy for the SADCC venture. Occasionally he allows his sympathy to weigh the balance too heavily. The problems which he identified have become even clearer in the last year with South Africa’s active policy of destabilization in neighbouring states. Overall, however, this is a very useful report.

JAMES BARBER University of Durham

GOVERNMENT AND DEVELOPMENT IN RURAL LESOTHO Roeland van de Geer and Malcolm Wallis National University of Lesotho, Lesotho, 1982, 159 pp.

This is a book that would be prominent on my shelves were I to have any direct contact with administrative reform of rural development work in Lesotho. After a brief resume of the constitutional history of the Lesotho nation the text moves on to a fuller treatment of the post independence period. It outlines changing structures in local administration. It has an interesting survey of local organizations and it deals with selected cases of sectoral programmes in rural development. The latter forms a substantial part of the book. It provides some basic data on the problems being tackled by government, for instance falling crop acreage (p. 78) and degradation of rangeland (p. 86), as well as description of the attempts to tackle them through departmental programmes.

If one is looking for anything about the theory of government or , more importantly for a book of this title, the relationship between government and rural development this work will not take one very far. Throughout the work there is the implicit theory that decentralization is a necessity for effective functioning of government and that for government to encourage participation would not only be virtuous but efficient. This comes over very clearly in the conclusions. After their review of sectoral activities, with all too familiar tales of minimal co- ordination, frustrated field staff and general lifelessness in District Development Committees their argument is generally persuasive. But their observations are now so universally to be found emanating from high places that they should not be taken at face value. One looks for some statement of the conditions under which decentralization or popular participation might not be appropriate, stemming from a broader understanding of the relationship of government and society. As they say themselves (p. 143) one must beware the panacea.

As it stands the book will undoubtedly fulfil a useful role both for students in Lesotho for which, as a product of a Dutch university linked project in curriculum dei1elopment, it was

Book Reviews 287

intended and also as a source book for those who wish to evolve a more general and theoretical treatise on government in rural development.

D. CURTIS Development Administration Group

University of Birmingham

THE NIGERIAN OIL ECONOMY J. K. Onoh Croom Helm, London, 1983, 152 pp.

Nigeria’s principal industry, the extraction and processing of mineral oil and natural gas, has attracted deplorably little scholarly enquiry since its early years. There is an obvious need for a detailed account of the industry in the developed form it had attained by the mid-1970s. Unfortunately, this book does not meet the need. It is significant that it nowhere cites the earlier studies of Nigerian oil by Schatzl and Pearson. The sources are very largely the Nigerian press and the hand-outs of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. Typically, the confusing account given of the ‘oilgate’ affair of 1979-1980 appears not to make direct use of the report of the Irikefe enquiry, and the chapter on revenue allocation among the governments of the federation does not refer the reader to the Okigbo Commission’s report. The book is a work neither of research nor of scholarship, and it would be a kindness to pass over it in silence, but it has been brought out by a well-known British publishing house and prospective readers are entitled to know what they are being offered.

The following comments will be directed toward the shortcomings in the account of the Nigerian oil industry; the imperfect knowledge of Nigerian and world affairs displayed; the fallacies, confusions and misunderstandings contained; and the prejudice shown against the ‘foreign’ (albeit now largely Nigerian-owned) companies operating in Nigeria.

Confidence in the work is shaken by a statement on its first page that the Nigerian economy had reached ‘crisis point’ by 1980. This was the year when, in fact, Nigerian earnings from oil attained a maximum. Those earnings fell sharply in 1981 and the Nigerian authorities reacted, rather tardily, in March 1982. A reduction by one-half in the Nigerian oil production quota, following the OPEC meeting of March 1982, is taken to have precipitated the fiscal austerity of 1982 (pp. 10, 17). It appears to have been assumed that production quotas have always been assigned by OPEC (pp. 23, 46). In fact, it was not until March 1982 that the first, not entirely successful, attempts to restrict production were made by the Organization. Nigeria then received a quota (of 1.3 million barrels per day) corresponding to her average daily production during the first quarter of 1982.

The account of the evolution of the Nigerian industry relies heavily on the reiteration of legislation and NNPC publicity material. It says little of the changes in the fiscal regime which began in 1966 and which are the basis of the government’s appropriation of the bulk of the economic rent generated by oil extraction. More attention is given to government participation in ownership of the producing companies, which is supposed (pp. 25-26) to have been constrained by available financial resources, although in fact the acquisitions were paid for out of NNPC shares in subsequent earnings. The reader is told of a distinction between ‘updated’ and ‘net’ book value as the basis for determining the cost of the acquisitions (p. 24), but neither term is explained. The proceeds from NNPC oil sales (now some 70 per cent of Nigerian production) are said not to appear in the federal government accounts (p. 74), but no attempt is made to explain where they d o appear (in fact, the NNPC is taxed in the same way as other enterprises engaged in the oil industry). No figures are given of the companies’ shares in oil production, although space can be afforded to list the annual totals of production twice (pp. 45 and 47). On p. 46 the reader is told that about 16 per cent of Nigeria’s production is consumed locally, but on p. 66 this proportion becomes less than 10 per cent. It is assumed in