The Cluster Concept: Will Nigeria’s New Industrial Development Strategy Jumpstart The Country’s Industrial Takeoff?

It is a known fact that industrialization is critical to economic development. In fact there is hardly any developed nation that is not industrialized. However, industrialization would only take place once there is a focused administration capable of wielding the necessary political will to implement clearly defined policies that can transform the nation’s processes away from primary production. The experience of Nigeria indeed shows that the nation has never been lacking in policies. What is always absent is the political will to implement, coupled with the rapid turnover of people in government, with the resulting consequence of most of the policies being abandoned. The paper therefore argues that even the new industrial development strategy introduced by Nigeria, which is anchored on the cluster concept, will most likely suffer the same fate unless something is urgently done to reverse this ugly trend.