Analyses of Nigeria's adjustment experience have emphasised
three
main issues, namely, federal government dominance of reform
processes; the macro-economic components and impact of the
structural adjustment programme (SAP); and social responses to
economic reform. Much illustrative material has been drawn also from
the agricultural and rural sector, reflecting the locus of SAP-induced
policy change in Nigeria. Less apparent in the available literature has
been the place of state governments in the adjustment process. Also
lacking is a historical perspective on the social infrastructure of étatism
in rural society – official and quasi-official groupings of peasants,
traders and rural dwellers.
This article examines continuity and change in farmer organisation
in Nigeria's cocoa belt since the 1930s. Locating agricultural politics
in
Ondo State since the 1970s within this historical context, the article
analyses the advent and operations of the Ondo State Farmers'
Congress (OSFC), supposedly a ‘farmers' lobby’ established
by the
local state in 1988. Congress operations, it is shown, illustrate Nigeria's
tradition of ‘top-down’ policy-making on agriculture and rural
development. But Congress was also inaugurated about the same time
as étatism was being dismantled. Congress's existence thus highlights
critical issues in the design of SAP, the structure of policy-making
on Nigeria agriculture, and the continuing debate on state–market
conjunctures in Africa's economic development.