CHAPTER ONE

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY One of the major economic backwardness of the most third world countries like Nigeria is the over prolonged sojourn of private foreign divestment in them. The predatory exploitative orientation and activities of foreign monopoly capital, it inherent tendency to resist and hamper local industrialization and to perpetuate merchant capitalism and its determination and deliberate efforts to retard the growth of endogamous entrepreneurship all this have heavily influenced Nigeria economic history for well over a century. This foreign dominance of commercial activities in Nigeria was made possible by restrictive practices employed by the established merchant firms.  It is important to note that commercial banking is a major source of credit (capital) was solely owned and controlled by foreign elements.   Their policies were made towards satisfying the needs of foreign enterprise, indigenous entrepreneurs merely subjected on the crumbs that fell on the gable. (Ezeigwe .J. O) Nigerian government in the 1950s operated mainly an open door policy which attempted to live foreign investors into the country. After the civil war, experiences showed that the issue of indigenous participation in the Nigerian economy once can be re-opened.   The dubious role played by foreign investors at various stages of the civil war and the acute shortage of essential commodities at the same period and the spirally inflationary trend that followed post war reconstruction and rehabilitation programs had contributed to inform the government that there was the necessity to allow the indigenes of Nigeria and government a hand in deciding their economic fortune.   The government was further persuaded by radical agitation of the politician s and the masses to do something about their economic difficulties. With these pressures and economic difficulties mounting higher and higher, the government decided to whittle down foreign dominance of the economy on 23rd February 1972, the military government promulgated the Nigeria enterprise promotion Decree No. 4 of 1977 popularly known as the indigenization decree the following were the objectives.